My Poor Children
May 5th, 2005I don’t have any children right now.
But when the time comes for me to have children, one of my biggest fears is that they will suffer from ADHD.
I am definitely not ready to have children because I don’t know what I would do when they received the diagnosis. Would I take them to a psychiatrist early in life and have them go through therapy? Would I subject their developing little brains to harsh stimulant medication?
I do know that I would try to spend as much time with them as possible. I would want to give them every possible advantage of having a loving parent to help them with their classwork and homework.
I would buy many educational toys to help them with their concentration and memory. I would give them all the art supplies they wanted in order to encourage their creative thinking.
I guess I probably wouldn’t medicate them until they reached late high school or college. It would break my heart to see them struggle through school the way I did, though, so I don’t know if I could sit back and watch them suffer with their illness, knowing that medication existed and was available.
I knew I wasn’t normal when I was young, although I didn’t know what ADHD was until I was in middle or high school. Therapy might help my children understand the differences in their brains, but having the ADHD label might hurt their self-esteem.
Until I have a better idea of what I would do for my kids, I will not have children. I am not ready to bring up children and watch them suffer in the same way that I have always suffered.
August 24th, 2005 at 6:31 pm
I am really relieved you have this site because it is common to feel so isolated unless you find a local CHADD meeting. I have similar experiences like yourself, everyday. I am 25. I constantly struggle with family, school, and employment and the frustration can be debilitating as you know. At the age of four, I had a teacher notice what she called odd behavior, well it was spacing out and told my mother that we needed top rule out seizures. Mom dished out a good bit for all the psychological testing, blah, blah, Stanford- Binet, blah, EEG, blah to find above average intelligence with delayed fine motor skills, etc… To make a long story short, I thought it would go after puberty- no more Ritalin. Nope. As I have gotten older and accepted life’s increase of resposibility, I am still toting a weary load. It’s weird. Multitasking is hell and criticisms of “being slow” from family and employees makes me feel worse than the fictional Forest Gump. I figure as long I am taking well care of my two small kids, I’ll be fine, but it is hard for me not to compare myself to others at times as far as competency. I am now considering seeing a psychiatrist but fear the script routine. If biofeedback works I want to try it because I am tired of busting butt but getting nowhere and not knowing why. I can think about nothing for periods at a time and I wonder what is going on in my head besides the psychobabble they feed us. I am scared to drive now because my attention span is so bad. I get close to rear ending people with my car, I can’t remember jokes or exact words to conversations. what have you found that works and is safe?