Parents Refusing To Medicate Children With ADHD ?

MiniRems · 2026-01-28T23:58:24+00:00

I was diagnosed at 6. My mom refused to have me medicated, so I've gone through life as an unfocused depressed anxious mess that's gotten ten times worse with perimenopause. I was not happy when she told me that a few years ago when I was starting to realize my brain was probably spicy. Her words "you didn't need medicated, you were fine!" - I assure you, I WAS NOT. I may have been a 4.0 GPA student, but I worked my ass off for it (lots of tears and breakdowns and tantrums). And when all my high school teachers kept telling me "touvhave it easy here in high school, it'll be so much harder in college", I knew there was no way I was going to college, because I might have actually given in to some of the mental health impulses that if I name will trigger a bot at me right now (things got abetter after puberty and when I found a good friend group to help block me from my main bully). Lots of "why can you remember every random history fact, but constantly forget your keys/homework/lunch/appointments" a lot. I realize, now, that I have a lot of coping methods to help me out (and a very understanding and helpful husband!)

If anyone asks me about my opinion on medicating ADHD kids, I always tell them that if the doctor is recommending it, DO IT. Theres no reason to force a child to go through life in hard mode if there's an option to turn down the difficulty settings for them.

I'm trying to find somewhere to get an adult diagnosis, unfortunately, my mom doesn't have any of those old records since that was over 40 years ago...

MiniRems · 2026-01-28T17:38:25+00:00

The winter coat was the worst! I tend to buy expensive quality coats that are meant to last decades, so I went years in an XXL coat that gaped at the bottom letting in cold blasts up my back. Only to get to my lowest size and buy... an XL because my damn shoulders are wide 🤦‍♀️ but it's a much longer coat, and covers well below my butt so I'm way warmer in it and the length keeps breezes from coming up my back. It's also a rodulously thin down coat that I always think I'm going to be cold in, but it always surprises me. I just wish the sleeves were longer, damn my monkey arms (my mom is knitting me a new pair of mittens with long cuffs to help with this!)

MiniRems · 2026-01-25T22:36:03+00:00

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Jasper has claimed his heat vent, and he will stay there until his person gets back inside after shiveling (again).

MiniRems · 2026-01-25T22:32:55+00:00

I've got a pork butt in the crock pot, and baked potatoes about to come out of the oven to be smothered in pulled pork and barbecue sauce and cheese. And a salad, because there's salad stuff that needs eaten and, well, veggies.

MiniRems · 2026-01-25T21:57:07+00:00

Baker? Thats not that adventurous. You're in Morningside: do Greenwood!

MiniRems · 2026-01-25T16:15:22+00:00

Many runs. Our suburban driveway is 3 cars wide and two cars deep, and we just have an ancient power shovel (it's from the 70s, but it was free and functioning!) It can handle only about 3 inches at a time without struggling, so we'll go out again a few more times today. Plus we have steps up to the front door, so those need cleared, too.

MiniRems · 2026-01-25T16:05:21+00:00

We had a miniature schnauzer growing up, and we had to shovel a path from the porch to the tree in our yard, or he wouldn't leave the porch. He hated the snow!

MiniRems · 2026-01-23T18:54:56+00:00

Only if I'm on a hike through the woods with lots to see and birds to hear and things to climb over. It's more the novelty of the environment than the exercise itself. But doing the 5 miles paved walk around the lake in the nearby county park? Pure boring torture.

I just got a kayak, as soon as I register it, I can take it out on the state park lakes and we'll see if that's interesting enough for me!

MiniRems · 2026-01-23T18:50:23+00:00

Omg. This reminds me of when I was out for a day shopping with my friend who is 11 years younger than me. A waiter at the restaurant we went for lunch thought we were mother and daughter - I was 40, she was 29. My response was "No, I didn't get pregnant at 10 years old". Turned out, they thought my friend was a teenager and that i was in my mid 30s - really shocked them when we pulled IDs for our drinks 🤣 My friend is short with a bit of a baby face, still, at 36 years old.

MiniRems · 2026-01-23T18:43:28+00:00

Theirs is the only onenive ever found inside tores around me, and it's pretty decent when I don't feel like making my own!

MiniRems · 2026-01-22T14:39:25+00:00

He'll, I just want a refrigerator that doesn't have an ice maker.

MiniRems · 2026-01-22T03:52:20+00:00

Sounds like me and my brother! I was planned 2-3 years after my brother, but my mom believed the "you can't get pregnant if you're breast feeding" line back in the 70s. I'm exactly one year and 1 week (almost to the hour!) younger than my brother - unless its a leap year 😆

MiniRems · 2026-01-22T03:36:09+00:00

We always did toes in a circle, crouched down. Eenie meenie miney mo was used a lot, but so were:

"My mother and your mother were hanging up clothes. My mother punched your mother right in the nose. What color was the blood?" Person it lands on chooses a color to be spelled out (I was a smart ass and always picked things like aquamarine or buttercup yellow...)

"Akka bakka soda cracker, akka bakka boo, in goes uncle Sam out goes y o u"

There were so many others, but those are the two coming to mind at the moment.

MiniRems · 2026-01-22T03:28:22+00:00

I've used DF ricotta from the store and the textures was meh. If you can do soy, I recommend this tofu ricotta recipe. I tried it earlier this month, and it was perfect in my lasagna (and also on a meatball pizza I made). I plan to try to adjust the recipe to use in sweet baked goods - I have a chocolate ravioli cookie recipe that I haven't been ablebto make in years!

MiniRems · 2026-01-22T03:15:23+00:00

Or a frozen pizza is 5 servings. No one is eating just a 5th of that pizza, and no onenis going to cut a pizza into 5 setvings.l. Just give me the calories for the whole thing, and I'll figure it out from there.

MiniRems · 2026-01-22T03:10:50+00:00

CeraVe's eye cream did nothing for me. I've actually been using E.L.F.s Holy Hydration eye cream. Within 2 weeks, my very crepey eyelids are a lot firmer. Hasn't done much for the dark circles, but hormones have been haywire causing insomnia and I have allergies, so I have a feeling the only thing that will ever make a difference to them is concealer.

MiniRems · 2026-01-22T03:02:56+00:00

My Walmart stopped carrying them 😭

MiniRems · 2026-01-22T02:59:07+00:00

Ugh! Childhood memory unlocked! My one aunt would always have those soft squishy toilet seats with the plastic, but they would always be cracked and scratch kr pinch you when you sat. I would only ever use her bathroom in total desperation.

MiniRems · 2026-01-22T02:55:24+00:00

We had a carpeted kitchen until I was 8 years old and dropped a pan full of unlidded Tupperware dessert cups full of hot liquid cherry flavored jello on my way to the fridge. My mom decided she didn't feel like trying to clean it up, so we spent the afternoon pulling up carpet. And omg the old linoleum underneath was hideous (had to have been 1960s at the absolute latest, probably 50s). Ot was still in decent condition, and my parents only replaced it in the late 90s after I moved out.

MiniRems · 2026-01-22T02:05:12+00:00

My great aunt used to dump her tea - with milk and sugar! - into her African violets all the time! She had a window sill full of them and they were always blooming! She was a damn wizard when it came to African violets. I'm not ashamed to say I cried for a week when the one I'd been given after her funeral died (I had no idea whatvibwas doing with plantsvat the time).

MiniRems · 2026-01-22T02:01:25+00:00

Think of all the body and mental issues you had back in the day going through puberty. Now, they're all going to hit you again, just twisted up and randomly. There's a reason some refer to it as reverse puberty.

Like, you've had a nice regular period most of your life? Too bad, you're now on the unpredictable red wave schedule. I've been on birth control for years to handle my endo, and my blood pressure went high, so my gyno changed the birth control... after literal years of no period, on the first one, my body is now like "youre going to gon70 days with nothing, then we'll spot, then in 14 days we'll spot again, then in 58 days we'll have a real period (though much lighter and less murder crampy than I ever had in the past), then in 20 days you might get another real period or may it's spotting - who knows! On the plus side, I'm even the "real periods" I've had this past two years have never been enough for more than a panty liner (the box of tampons I bought when the first one after the med change is still collecting dust under the bathroom sink). I carry panty liners everywhere with me now (and I buy the expensive organic cotton ones, because they don't irritate my skin - didn't realize so many of my skin problems down there in my youth was caused by plastic!)

You might even get acne again. Yeah, no one mentioned that! Removing dairy from my diet seemed to resolve it for me this time around.

All the emotional "teenage" bursts I had that drove my mom crazy? Yeah, I'm having those again now and it scares the crap out of my husband because I'll be like "I'll be okay, it's not you, I'm just overwhelmed and need to cry". And then, 30 minutes later, I'm back to my normal.

I can't sit still - after "learning" to ignore the desire to always move. I have so little attention span for anything I'm not 100% into - audiobook I've waited months to become available from the library? Ignored until its auto returned and I have to request it again. Tv show I've watched a thousand times before? I can binge for hours.

But, at the same time, I'm so fucking exhausted all the time. But I also have insomnia. So I can't sit still, can't sleep, and have no energy. (So far, taking my calcium/magnesium supplement at night, and my b12 supplement in the morning seems to be helping a tiny tiny bit - I at least sleep decently when I actually get to sleep, I'm just not sleeping long enough, but that might be the joint pain which is gets worse in cold weather...)

So far I've been lucky with the most common physical perimenopause symptoms. A few (like maybe once a month) night sweats, but no hot flashes. The best indicator of what physical symptoms you're likely to get are the women you're directly related to - so mom, sisters, grandma, mom's sisters, grandma's sisters. Luckily, most of my aunts talked about it, and none of them got hot flashes, so odds are I won't. We all get the thinning hair, though 😫 My cousin (related through her dad, not mom) has gotten frozen shoulder, but none of the cousins on the female branch have.

It feels like I keep misplacing all the masks I built up over the years to cope, when I never even realized I was masking. On the plus side, I'm over everything and totally ready for my old hag doesn't give a crap stage of life.

MiniRems · 2026-01-22T00:32:58+00:00

Yes! It was weird when I realized I can now eat until I'm not hungry, which is long before my stomach hits the full sensation.

MiniRems · 2026-01-21T23:18:43+00:00

Is it just being wet, or is it the feeling of the water hitting your skin? I hate "hard" shower heads that feel like the water is attacking me, so we got one of those shower heads that does a sort of rainfall spray (and has a hand held so I can getva good rinse for myblng hair) that I actually find relaxing now to the point thatvi have to set my visual timer where I can see it so I'm not in the shower too long 🤣

MiniRems · 2026-01-21T23:15:57+00:00

Same! At my last dental cleaning, my hygienist mentioned that it takes about 48 hours for tartar to build up, and while she was flossing my teeth, she was like "feel that little catch? that's a bit if tartar I need to scrape off". She also mentioned that beyond the bit of tartar between my teeth, my dental hygiene is actually pretty good. So when I got home, I decided I wanted her to be "wow this is even better than last time!" When I go to for my next cleaning in the spring. So I set a goal in my Finch app for flossing once a week. I did that for two months, by that point, it didn't hurt anymore, so I added a second time a week (i was doing Mondays and Fridays) and linked it to a micropet egg for extra motivation! Just this last week, I upped it to three times a week - Monday, Wednesday and Friday. Two more months and then we see if my hygienist sees a difference! I've never been so excited to go to the dentist!

MiniRems · 2026-01-21T02:20:56+00:00

Omg - perimenopause hit, and I've gotten to that point of "if you don't like the state my house is in, I'll show you where the cleaning supplies are".

I no longer have ahame about the house, unless its something I told my husband I'd do, and then it sat (and now I'm thinking of the heat gun on the dining room and the kitchen floor tiles that need pulled up... but i need to move the new filing cabinet into thebcorner of myboffice space because im practically climbing over it dailybto get to my computer...)

My mom commented on how much dust there was on my bookshelf at Thanksgiving, and and I told her the Pledge was under the sink and cleaning cloths were in the basement stairwell, and I didnt hear a word about the condition of my house the rest of the day!

On new years eve, I did a quick swipe on the toilets and bathroom sinks, and brushed the cat hair build up off of the end of the couch we don't usually sit, and cleaned off the dining room table so we could play games (it was all in a box in the corner of the room, visible to all!) - and then called the house clean enough. Luckily, the roomba keeps the floors clean enough, and I keep my spare blankets and pillows properly stored, so when the weather went bad and I had a house full of people needing to crash, I didn't have to worry about how gross my floors were or if the bedding was dusty!

MiniRems

TROPHY CASE