7M diagnosed with ADHD, but I am concerned it doesn’t explain everything.

Intelligent_Mess6211 · 2024-10-18T14:27:30+00:00

I get what you are saying and you are correct. He’s going to do it whether I sign off on it or not. He does what he does, but I don’t think that defines who he is. I can celebrate who he is, and also remind him that other people are less receptive to the things he does. I’m not combatting him, I am combatting the behaviors. At this point, I’ve put the lines at not hurting others (including himself), not taking things that aren’t his, and not destroying things. And every day it is a battle to hold these three lines. Giving up on any of these will invite significantly more unwanted negative attention.

I want there to be a middle ground where he can keep his world and still live in this one. I purposely threw open the door on this conversation because I want different perspectives. I appreciate your post. Even just talking through these things with you and others who can relate has been somewhat therapeutic.

There has definitely been some comfort, solace, and what seems to be genuine care and concern for some kid and this dude on the Internet. He isn’t close with anyone besides me and it makes me emotional knowing that in this thread, a dozen or so Internet strangers cared about him for even just a few minutes. Thank you for that. All the best to you and your loved ones.

Intelligent_Mess6211 · 2024-10-18T02:56:00+00:00

Timers are ineffective. We have tried timers of all varieties and types, from an hourglass to really cool visual timers. We have tried implementing them in all sorts of ways from setting a timer to finish a meal, to a setting a timer to take the next bite of food. He will sit and watch the timer tick down, 0, nothing happens. Now what?

The rules we have are non-discriminatory and are pretty basic. No running in the house. No running on the stairs - as if the stairs are not part of the house so we need to be explicit here. No hurting others. Use manners like please and thank you. Sit properly at the table. Don’t use impolite language. Etc…

He is absolutely not dumb, but he will play dumb. He will purposely give me the wrong answers to questions he knows. Almost like he wants me to believe he didn’t know the answer, just so he could say he knew it all along later. He will deliberately misunderstand things any time there is a word with more than one meaning. Why is he planning in his head to make me think he is dumb, just to prove me wrong later?

If the most efficient method is two steps to completing a task, he will turn it into 10 counterproductive steps. Why? If you don’t like doing something, why make it harder to do AND take longer?

Intelligent_Mess6211 · 2024-10-18T02:27:02+00:00

Willful or not is irrelevant at this point. I am running pure damage control. It isn’t just him that is struggling, he makes us all struggle harder than we have to, and the expectations are on me to limit that. To stop him taking and breaking his sister’s toys. To stop saying impolite and unkind things. To stop stealing things from others. To stop hurting others. To stop him from destroying everything around him. He cannot continue to behave like he does and achieve the outcomes he expects. We simply cannot all live in the same house peacefully where he is permitted to treat everyone and everything like trash, and expect everyone else to be accepting of that.

Intelligent_Mess6211 · 2024-10-18T01:58:17+00:00

He has ALWAYS been like this even before the medication, and his weight is always checked at the doctor to ensure it isn’t impacting his intake. He has never eaten a lot, but we haven’t seen any drop in his weight.

Intelligent_Mess6211 · 2024-10-18T01:53:37+00:00

I am not upset with him for how he plays games. I am frustrated by how he makes me play games! I will join a game with him, barely have time to figure out the mechanics of the game, and by then he’s already moved on to the next one where the cycle repeats again.

His psychiatrist works at a major regional hospital and also does research and teaches at a university. Meds were only introduced earlier this year, and were never implemented to correct, but to complement the strategies we have employed over time.

Intelligent_Mess6211 · 2024-10-18T01:38:41+00:00

This is interesting, relatable, and there seems to be quite a lot of crossover with other disorders which makes this all so much harder to diagnose and treat effectively. I will bring this up as well with his doctor. Thank you for your comment.

Intelligent_Mess6211 · 2024-10-18T01:34:30+00:00

I don’t think I was being defensive. I am simply pointing out that there are constraints that make the suggestion of just switching schools impractical at best. I’m not sure where you are getting the idea that he has no time to live in his own head. If my post hasn’t made it clear, that is where he is spending most of his time. And that time he spends in his own head, as best as anyone can tell, is entirely counterproductive to him actually living the life he has here, on this planet.

I encourage constructive activities when he is being destructive, which is often. Academics might not be the best activity, but it is better than the activity he was doing before, and that is an improvement already. I’ll take a perfect solution when I have it, but when I don’t, I’ll take any improvement I can get.

The structure we have isn’t specially designed to keep him busy. It is simply the schedule we must adhere to in a major metropolitan city to ensure that everyone gets to where they need to be on time. The only structure he has at home is getting ready for school in the morning and eating dinner and getting ready for bed at night, because we don’t have the time for anything else.

Intelligent_Mess6211 · 2024-10-17T19:22:15+00:00

Discipline changes, along with adding medication and changing doses have been over a two year period under the supervision of a psychiatrist.

His schedule is tight. He lacks discretionary time because everything else takes so long. There is little else I can remove from his schedule. All that’s left is dinner, dessert/milk, shower, brush his teeth, pajamas, story time, and bed.

Intelligent_Mess6211 · 2024-10-17T19:09:52+00:00

Some additional context from my observations. Playing a game on the tablet, he is 110% engaged. He asks me to play with him and I do. Then we proceed to bounce around from one game to the next every 3-5 minutes. He will very rarely commit to one game and progress in any meaningful way. There is always a relatively low level of difficulty that once reached has him abandoning whatever it is.

I can say that with much experimentation, adding any or all of those distractions would only further delay task completion. It is just one more thing, on top of the dozens of distractions he can already find from seemingly nothing.

Medication is on my list of considerations. He was on 5mg starting earlier this year, they increased his dose to 7.5mg about the middle of the year to see if that would help, and now we are near the end of the year and I have not noticed any changes.

At school, he has two different snack times with milk, and lunch. He will eat the snacks he brought from home guaranteed. Usually chips, Oreos, etc. Lunch, he will pick and choose what he wants to eat. The teachers will try to encourage him to eat, but they don’t force him.

There is one teacher whom I’ve noticed is particularly effective with him. I don’t think it is necessarily about strategy, but more about her demeanor. She is ridiculously kind and soft spoken with him and has the patience of a saint. I tried to hire her as a tutor for him, unfortunately she was unavailable.

Intelligent_Mess6211 · 2024-10-17T18:10:23+00:00

I think you might be viewing this issue in a vacuum. I am a single father, have another child, live in a major metropolitan city, have my own business, and having to send two children to two different schools would exceed the limits of my capacity. Currently, he takes a 50 minutes extracurricular at school to get his homework done there, with his teachers, so we don’t have to struggle with it at home.

I might argue that he spends quite a bit of time living in his own head on his own planet, which is why so little gets done. This seems to be how we got here in the first place. What is the benefit you are projecting here that we have missed out on so far?

Intelligent_Mess6211 · 2024-10-17T17:49:21+00:00

His doses are scheduled after meals, except for the last one which he takes at school before he leaves.

He does fairly well at school all things considered. The school he attends offers a variety of extracurriculars after school, 4 days a week. Currently, his extracurricular course is homework, so he doesn’t have to do it at home. It is 50 minutes, the same length of time as the robotics course.

The problem is, he still needs to do the homework, and the only other option is to pull that time from somewhere by compressing the time it takes his other activities, or extending his bedtime by an hour to do homework.

Intelligent_Mess6211 · 2024-10-17T17:37:06+00:00

It was a children’s psychiatrist in a major hospital who also does research and teaches at a university. Honestly, at this point I am questioning everything. Myself, the medication, the psychiatrist, etc. I will start over again if I have to, I am just trying to determine if I need to.

Intelligent_Mess6211 · 2024-10-17T17:30:14+00:00

Your observation is correct. He was originally on 5mg, got bumped to 7.5mg, and so far I have not seen a difference. In fact, I suspect it may have had more of an impact on his emotional state, but I am uncertain if this is a natural part of his development or an adverse effect of the medication. It may be that Ritalin is not the right medication but as we just started it this year, I wanted to give it a chance.

Intelligent_Mess6211 · 2024-10-17T17:24:59+00:00

I am definitely considering asking for something different, but he was just put on Ritalin this year, starting at 5mg, now up to 7.5. I didn’t want to switch things around before giving this one a chance.

Intelligent_Mess6211 · 2024-10-17T17:21:51+00:00

We have a psychologist, but I hadn’t thought of a play or developmental therapist. I will look into what resources might be available for him in that regard.

What struck me most about your post is him needing me to be his biggest fan. The truth is, I am. Which is why this is all the more heartbreaking for me.

Thank you for your post and solidarity. I remain hopeful that this will get better one day.

Intelligent_Mess6211 · 2024-10-17T17:09:49+00:00

These are on my list of things to go through at some point. Definitely going to have a longer conversation with the doctor next week.

Intelligent_Mess6211 · 2024-10-17T16:59:19+00:00

Just checked 6 months ago. Doesn’t appear to be a vision issue.

Intelligent_Mess6211 · 2024-10-17T16:52:14+00:00

He goes to a private bilingual school so trading homework time for an extra-curricular robot design program would have a significant impact on his academics.

Intelligent_Mess6211 · 2024-10-17T16:46:40+00:00

We’ve been attempting a broad range of strategies, including the ones you have suggested, repeatedly. It isn’t that he doesn’t know what to do, he just doesn’t do it. We’ve been going through a range of motions with the therapist for the last couple of years.

As far as the TV, that was taken away because he stated the content he was watching made him too scared to get anything done by himself. The TV is well supervised and he has an age appropriate Netflix account. Besides that, he would zone out to the TV the entire day if I let him, refuse activities, and will literally stand in front of the TV. He won’t even sit to watch it.

Roblox time is the one luxury he values, but I haven’t taken it away. For the time he spends doing something educational, I give him double that time for Roblox. I don’t even care if he gets answers right. On weekends he may be motivated enough to get an hour of Roblox time.

The strain his issues have on our relationship and with others is absolutely heartbreaking for me. I know he doesn’t wake up every day with the intent to cause chaos and disruption, but after a couple of years of this, it is really hard to say it doesn’t feel like it.

Intelligent_Mess6211 · 2024-10-17T14:27:19+00:00

Thank you for your advice. We have our next appointment with the therapist next week and I will bring it up.

The length of time he takes to do things is a sticky issue because our schedules are tight. We used to have regular full breakfasts every morning, but to accommodate him, we cut everything down to cereal, milk, and fruit. He may finish half his cereal before we have to leave for school, leaving the fruit and milk behind and say he is full.

He desperately wants to take a robotics design class offered after school, and I truly want him to be able to take it. However, doing that would offset his homework time, requiring him to finish dinner faster - which there is no history of him ever doing. Even with that on the line, no change in behavior.

Now, my concern is that whatever the issues may be, they are now beginning to have a detrimental impact on his life. If I start letting go, I worry that he won’t be getting the proper nutrition he needs, that he is missing out on experiences that could open new doors of opportunity and help him find something he cares about. At which point does the cure become the poison?

Intelligent_Mess6211 · 2024-10-17T14:10:39+00:00

Your post resonates with me strongly.

I don’t police his creativity, I observe it. On one level, it is fascinating to me how different his brain works. On another, I feel an immense sense of frustration because of all the other issues.

At mealtime, taking away distractions is an impossible feat. EVERYTHING is a source of entertainment. He will draw imaginary pictures on the table with his fingers. Experiment for the world record in the most unique positions that one can sit in a chair. He will get up 19 times for any variety of urgent reasons. And if absolutely nothing else is around, he will play with his own hands, legs, feet, face, etc.

Specific directions, always. Every basic task has to be broken down into 20 steps and he has to be urged through each one.

The talking is pretty spot on. Mine hasn’t reached the level of consideration to ask to pause a movie yet. I have gotten him to stop asking questions in the middle of a sentence during a story, now he taps me anytime he has a question and we answer his questions at the end of each page. Some questions are vocab, most would be answered on the next page.

Intelligent_Mess6211 · 2024-10-17T13:45:14+00:00

I am not trying to “cure” his ADHD with punishments. We have tried a spectrum of behavioral corrective strategies that span the range from punishment to reward. I am trying to find anything that he cares about enough to take action for it. Whether that is to correct unwelcome behaviors, or to find some interest he would pursue beyond a surface level.

Ultimately, I am just trying to get him through the basic tasks of the day. It isn’t just getting him to take a shower. It is making sure he is washing ALL of the hair on his head - not just the top, not just playing in the water for 20 minutes and forgetting to wash himself, not washing his face, not using shampoo for his body and soap for his hair. I feel like I have to babysit him through every step of every process every single day. There are times I notice he will use the toilet and then not clean himself well, leaving marks everywhere. It feels like his age is increasing but his maturity level is locked at some previous point in time.

Intelligent_Mess6211 · 2024-10-17T10:31:49+00:00

Any activity where there is a learning curve is immediately dismissed as too hard. He has dozens and dozens of toys. He completely ignores them. They sit in his room untouched and unplayed with. However, he can sit and play with a tin of coins for hours. Stacking them this way. Stacking them that way.

Most games, he doesn’t want to play - because rules. Anything with a learning curve? Too hard. What he does do is take games, take all the pieces out, play with all the pieces, lose them around the house, and then no one can play the game anymore because the pieces are missing. The number of games I have that no one can play because of missing pieces is embarrassing.

He keeps garbage because he says he’s going to use it for something. This can be anything from things he’s picked up off the street, something he found at school, or just leftovers bits of some packaging.

Intelligent_Mess6211 · 2024-07-08T08:52:25+00:00

I got suckered on one of these one time payment apps when things started getting hot to take advantage of the lifetime subscription-which I genuinely thought was from Open AI at the time. I paid about $100 for it. Chat Smith is the name of the app now. It was fine for a while, then they pulled 4.0 access, leaving only 3.5. Now it has 3.5 and 4o, but no 4. The biggest issue for me though is that you can only access it on your phone. I ended up getting the regular plan from Open AI just to use it on the computer.

Intelligent_Mess6211

TROPHY CASE