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Is it more than just ADHD?


I started this blog just last week to share about our life parenting a child with ADHD. In the final paragraph of that first entry, I referenced that he was also dealing with anxiety, and “possibly other undiagnosed issues.”  Because of the extreme difficulty Elijah is having at school, and the failure of any ADHD medication to really help him, we are in the process of psychological testing currently to see if there is something else going on. This testing may lead us to a new diagnosis, which might shift the specific focus of this blog, though it will still continue. I will just write about our journey with the new diagnosis if that is the case.  We have to go back for four more testing sessions for Elijah. We should know the results the week before Thanksgiving. The results could be life altering. I am not going to be specific yet about what it could be. I will wait until we know for sure. There is no point in put it out there for speculation when we will have our answer soon.
In the meantime, we wait, as Elijah goes through every day of school having a difficult time. This is tough as a parent. Every day, I send my child off to a place where I know he struggling, where I am sure he will probably get into trouble for something, and punishment is not even really effective, because there is an underlying issue causing the behavior. He will come home feeling defeated, like he has failed again. I will have to listen to him talk about not having any friends and how he fells like he is not smart.  I will have to hear him talk about how much he hates school and doesn’t want to be there. I will have to battle with him to do homework that he doesn’t understand why he can’t seem to just focus on easily and get done. And then, I have to send him back the next day and have it all happen again.

His teacher is good. She has been patient and understanding. But, I know she has to be at the end of her rope too. Who wouldn’t be, dealing with the strange things Elijah does? I feel awful that I can’t “fix” him, that I just keep sending him back to her classroom where he will inevitably do something difficult that she will have to deal with. I grew up with a strong desire to please teachers and huge fear of letting them down. I always wanted to be the perfect student, so I put on my best behavior and I worked hard, sometimes going above and beyond to make myself stand out in a positive way. Now, my child is the student, and my desire the please the teacher is still there, but it is not me this time, so I have no control. And my son and I couldn’t be more different in the way our school experience is playing out. So, every time I get a note about what he did that day, it makes me feel like I have completely failed. Pleasing teachers was a huge part of who I was as a child, and now I can’t please this one vicariously through my son, because we are not the same person. Of course, I remind myself that I neither had ADHD nor whatever else he might be diagnosed with. I had the ability to do the things I needed to do, and nothing standing in my way of doing them. Elijah is different. And it isn’t my fault. I have to repeat this phrase over and over again to myself, because I struggle to believe it in my heart, even though in the rational part of my brain I know it is true. I always go back to wondering if I did something wrong to cause him to be the way he is. I always hear the voices in my head of the people who say, “kids just need good parenting and they will be fine.” So, consequently, when they are not fine, I hear, “you didn’t parent him well. You screwed up. That’s why he is the way he is.” When that happens, I have to go back to what the therapist tells me, which is “kids do well if they can.” This is not his original quote, but he uses it a lot, and it helps bring me back down to realizing that if my son isn’t doing well, he probably can’t under the current conditions. And that is why something has to change. That is why we are proceeding with the testing. We have to find out what exactly is going on to cause him to act this way. Then we can move forward.

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