Living with ADDversity: Excerpts from the Life of an ADHD Family

Have you ever applied for a job, a job you just knew you could do, had all the qualifications for and knew that you were just the right person for? I did - the job of being ‘a parent’. I read all the books, had some experience of other people’s kids and I was a fully qualified children’s nurse – impeccable credentials don’t you think? Yes – I was made for this job.

I actually got the job too! It went really well, a few hiccoughs in the first weeks, you know the sort of thing - not much sleep, disorganised - but nothing I couldn’t cope with. Then it happened: my wonderful job started going wrong, just didn’t match the job description any more. Had I read it wrong? Maybe there was something I had missed. “No”, my mum said, the job was just as they had described it, just the way it was when she used to do it – I just needed a little more time to learn the ropes, settle in and things would be fine. But there WAS something wrong – I just knew it (as a mum you do, just know when there is something not right with your child).

I stuck at it and it was several years before my darkest suspicions were confirmed by a Consultant Child Psychiatrist. I was right: my son Noah did have difficulties.

“DIFFICULTIES – what does that mean?”

“Well – he’s bright, very bright – easily bored and quite active, but there could be something you’re doing wrong. He’s got lots of energy…do you ever, you know, get down on the floor and play with him?”

DID I! He was insatiable - all I ever seemed to do was play with him; Thomas the Tank, Action Man, Spider Man, Cowboys and Indians, you name it we played it. But he never seemed to get tired. When Noah did eventually fall asleep at night his high levels of activity continued in bed – both he and the duvet usually ending up on the floor in a tangled heap!

Okay so, maybe it’s us, maybe we’re not good parents, we’ll re-train, that’s what we’ll do. And, like idiots, we did – I still can’t believe we did it, but we did – went to parenting classes and did as we were told. It didn’t work - that was when things started to fall apart, at school, at home, with friends – it was all falling apart around us and it seemed like there was nothing we could do. Our perfect child was taking over our lives and we were no longer just normal parents.

Then, along came Louis: he was only seven when he galloped across our TV screen like a demented giraffe but Louis saved our lives. Louis may never know what he did for us, but from the moment we saw him we knew what was wrong with our son. Just like Louis, Noah had ADHD – or Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder - and no doctor was going to tell us otherwise. They tried – oh how they tried - using all the words they thought we wanted to hear, “intelligent”, “lively – enquiring mind”, “doesn’t need much sleep”, “easily bored”, “possible food sensitivities”, and then came all the parenting stuff – anyway I’m starting to repeat myself. You see! That’s how it gets to you as a mum – you think you’re the one with the problem, not your child or the professionals. Just imagine: if that’s how I felt as a medical professional myself, how would someone else with little or no knowledge feel!

As the parent of an ADHD child it seemed a natural progression to train as an ADHD Coach and Learning Mentor. I see evidence of the torment that parents go through every day, the struggles they have with their conscience…to medicate or not to medicate, could it be their fault, is it something they did? I live and work with ADHD – partly through choice, partly through circumstances. There are so many issues around ADHD that I am faced with on a daily basis that I am in a position to be able to relate to you just what it is like both living with ADHD and working with the condition.

I have gone along the well-worn path that so many mothers of disabled children have trodden before me. I have been to places in my head which I never even knew existed, I have done things I never, ever believed I would have to do and have come out the other side, exhausted at times, exhilarated too by small achievements but empowered, stronger and full of knowledge that only experience can buy.

My diary will relate to you what it’s like to live with ADHD, what other parents are experiencing, what’s new in the field, current research and how to get the best from these children. Lots of what I do works well, other things work great for a few weeks, then, WHAM! we’re back to square one and have to look for new approaches.

The choices I have made as a mum are very personal – if they are not choices you would make as a reader, I would ask you not to judge. I made these choices for a reason and the only reason is to make life better for us as a family. My son is part of a family – he has a disability which is only one part of him – something which he has to learn to work around. The real world will not work around him: that is the reality and the way I have to show him although it often breaks my heart to do it.

As a reader, you will learn what goes on in my life and his – about his sister Alice, brother Harry and long-suffering dad Buzz.

My diary is my little oasis in a sea of over-activity! Funny – I hadn’t realised how far we have come until I started to write it all down. Life is full of surprises!

If you do have any comments or suggestions related to ADHD it would be wonderful to hear them. Please write to me at jansdiary and I will do my best to answer your questions.

Until next time

Jan

Jan Assheton RGN RSCN is an Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) Coach and Learning Mentor and the mother of a child with ADHD. She will be sharing the benefits of her personal and professional experience every two weeks.