Monday, September 24, 2007

My Son, the College Senior, Who Forgot my Birthday Again This Year...


is doing a project on ADHD and would love a few personal anecdotes from parents about how they deal with ADHD in their children.

Are you up for helping me demonstrate to him the definition of grace? Sure, son, forget my birthday and I'll still ask my friends to help you out.

Anyone want to help Kyle with his project?

or, if you don't have personal anecdote to share, do you have any links of websites that might be helpful?

Thanks for any help you can give. Grace is fun.

3 comments:

Becky said...

I must admit I thought ADHD was one of those labels people put on normal behavior because it was challenging to deal with. I thought kids were put on drugs because parents were too busy to parent. Then I met Evan. The light dawned for me the first time I helped him with homework. We would work on his English and labored for 15 or more minutes on each sentence of a single paragraph and when the sentence was finally worked out, he would go to write it down and it was gone. He couldn't remember it at all. I started seeing it in other areas of his life as well. Directions to the restroom in a restaurant were useless because he would forget them when he was halfway there. Learning anything new was so challenging that he would give up and go back to the things he already did well. He couldn't remember a series of steps to anything, only each individual step as it was presented. It seems the negative behavior came as a result of his frustration and to cover the feeling of being stupid for not being able to do the things his peers did easily.

Things turned out well for him in the end because we found a great school and a wonderful ADHD coach who helped him find techniques that worked with his way of thinking rather than trying to conform him to the "normal" way. It was and is a daily challenge for him, but he has been able to move beyond it being the primary focus of his life. He is in college and doing well.

lillinda said...

I Stumbled across your blog from another, and I guess we have a few things in common, adoption, and birthdays. (My 24 yo son forgot mine ,too) Oh well, life does goes on.
Happy Birthday !
lillinda

Boo said...

My 9yo complains that the worst thing about ADHD for him is the blurting out stuff. He says the teacher will say 'don't yell out the answer" and he hears that and knows that he isn't supposed to, but then she asks the question and all of a sudden he is blurting out the answer.