As a mother of a child who has been “labelled” as having ADHD, I am surprised by the amount of downright contradictory information on this illness. One specialist told me that diet would have no impact on my son, another said to change his diet completely whilst another suggested I just accept facts and put him on Ritalin.
The more I read on Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder, the more confused I become! I am quite intelligent – although one of my son’s specialists did tell me that my son had inherited ADHD from me. He was able to “diagnose” me after speaking to me for ten minutes. I read a lot and perhaps I do have problems focusing some of the time but then who doesn’t? I am certainly not going to start taking drugs to “cure” this and if I am not prepared to be drugged, then why would I allow my four year old son to be.
Please don’t misunderstand me – I believe that some, but only a few, children and adults can benefit from taking medications such as Ritalin, Metadate etc. I believe that if parents have investigated this illness and their child has been properly assessed and diagnosed i.e. other conditions which can mimic the symptoms of ADHD are investigated and discounted, then perhaps their child will benefit from these drugs. However, as a parent of a child diagnosed with ADHD, I would be concerned that whilst the short term studies have shown that these medicines are possibly safe – what are the long term studies going to show?
So what help is available for parents whose child has been “diagnosed” as having ADHD by their child’s school or the other mothers at the school gates? Well, I would suggest that we all apply some good old fashioned sense to this situation. Please remember that I am not being judgemental – I am coming from the same position – I was devastated, at first, when my son was “diagnosed” with ADHD. But now I am more educated on the subject although I would never consider myself an expert. But with the experts constantly contradicting each other – I am rather glad I am not one.
All kids need their parents time – may sound obvious but how many of us are rushing around so fast in this crazy world that we only ever stop to punish our kids – i.e. we only speak to them to say stop doing that, why cant you go and play etc. Countless studies have shown that children can have all the toys and gadgets in the world but they are happier if their parents play games with them.
In the old days, kids could run free outside – parents were happy to let their children run off adventuring with their friends. Now, children don’t have that benefit. Children, in particular boys, need to burn off their excess energy. It is a fact of life, that unlike our parents who grew up in an era of food rationing and shortages, children today are in the main very well nourished. So what do you get when you combine well nourished children with no freedom to run off the energy that nourishment provides? Could they perhaps show signs of aggression, hyperactivity, lack the ability to concentrate – the list of symptoms are endless. Funnily enough these symptoms can be used to diagnose ADHD.
Children need a lot of time, consistent discipline and healthy diets. But they also need to “run” off their energy. They need the freedom to be children, to climb trees and run around – children need to play. Most children go through phases but I think parents of boys in particular would recognise that a lot of boys experience a rush of testosterone between the ages of 5 and 8. During this period, they can become unruly and difficult to manage – so they need an out for this hormone. In the old days, they would have run riot around the streets or farms and burnt off the excess. Today, they are expected to sit still and concentrate – either at school or at home. So many schools do not have the staff or sport facilities required – so many homes do not have big gardens and so many areas do not have adequate children’s facilities such as playgrounds and free well maintained adventure parks. Generally speaking, girls can sit still and concentrate for longer periods than boys – but given a chance to burn off some energy these same boys appear to be able to concentrate better on their lessons and are easier to manage.
So is it any surprise that more boys are diagnosed with ADHD than girls or that the number of diagnosed ADHD cases is rising? Surely it makes sense to put some funds into developing free safe well maintained child facilities and playgrounds, reducing the number of children in the classes at school and ensuring that all schools have the proper facilities i.e. a wide range of sports and leisure activities. Common sense dictates that we, as a society, should be pushing for these changes rather than spending millions and millions on drugs to dope up our kids!

Please help me help others by visiting our website at http://www.ourexceptionalkids.com

Is ADHD a sign/symptom of modern society? Listening to, or reading media items, you might begin to think it was. The first documented case of what we now call attention deficit hyperactivity disorder was diagnosed over 100 years ago.
A Dr Hoffman wrote a poem in 1845 called Fidgety Philip for his son. If read today that poem describes the behaviour most parents would relate to a “typical” ADHD child.
Dr Stills, a Paediatrician based in London used the label “Defect of Moral Control” to describe the behaviour of hyperactive children in 1902.
Shortly before the Second World War, physicians started treating children with the symptoms of ADHD with amphetamines. Amphetamines were thought to reduce the symptoms of impulsiveness and hyperactivity commonly found with this condition.
The American Psychiatric Association first published papers, the DSM (Diagnostic Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders) in the 1950’s. They were republished in 1968 when a condition resembling ADHD was first mentioned. This condition was named Attention Deficit Disorder in the revised 1980 edition. In the 1987 edition, it was renamed Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder. The definition was changed again in the fourth and most recent edition published in 1994.
Can you imagine how much money has been spent on investigating this condition? In the period of 100 years from Dr Still’s observations, ADHD has been described or blamed on:
1. Behaviour that was biological in nature
2. Linked to brain damage
3. Then it was all down to the food, the environment and the parenting.
It would now appear that attention deficit disorder may be linked to all three i.e. it is biological in nature (possibly genetic). There is a difference in the brain activity of a child diagnosed with ADHD and others (although it is not seen as brain damage). Finally, there is a very vocal school of thought that blames food additives and the environment. I, for one, believe that my son’s diet contributed to his behaviour problems – I blame the 100% pure apple juice!
Thankfully now modern society has begun to realise that ADHD, ADD or whatever the next new name will be is a complex condition which is very difficult to diagnose – well at least diagnose correctly. There is so much rumour, controversy and downright speculation regarding this condition that parents and medical professionals can find it difficult to get proper assistance and information.
ADHD is not a symptom of modern society but an ongoing medical condition which needs further help and resources to find and promote a definitive diagnosis procedure, treatment and ultimately a cure.

For more information please visit our site at http://www.ourexceptionalkids.com

Welcome to our blog - again. Rachel and I started this blog a few weeks ago but due to a technical error we lost our data and are now starting over. So, once again I welcome you to our blog and we hope that you come back and visit often.

Rachel and I are both mothers of special needs children and we know how difficult it can be raising a child that, although looks perfectly normal, does have some issues to deal with. We know how the behavior of a special needs child can often be mistaken as just ‘being naughty’ due to the fact that they don’t have any physically obvious looks of any medical problem.

In fact, I myself at first thought that my son was just going through a stage of bad behavior and I waited for him to outgrow it. It wasn’t until this behavior increasingly got worse over a few years to the stage that we then knew it was not just normal ‘being naughty’ behavior.

Sometimes it isn’t easy getting your child diagnosed when they don’t have all the obvious symptoms and the whole diagnosis process can be very frustrating. These are just some of the reasons that Rachel and I got together to create our site at http://www.ourexceptionalkids.com  and this blog, so that we could share our experiences and our knowledge and so our visitors could read ‘real’ information from mothers who have lived it.

So we hope that you do gain some help from our site and blog and please feel free to leave us comments here on the blog. If there is anything that you would like to see included in our site or blog or even if you would like to tell us your story and we could publish it on our blog, then please leave a message in our comments.

If you haven’t already done so then have a look at our site http://www.ourexceptionalkids.com  

Take care
Sheryl