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Saturday, October 23, 2010

Embracing ADHD

When my oldest son started Kindy earlier this year he was "flagged" for his intensity. The teacher (who I love) asked me if I wanted to pursue testing and coding. In this province if your child is diagnosed with a learning disability or condition such as ADD or ADHD then the school gets more money to use to help facilitate his learning.
I don't really want to code him as this would follow him around forever, and I also have no desire to medicate him.
I am trying so hard to just accept him as he is. He is a bright, extremely bright, well spoken, imaginative, sensitive, empathetic, curious, excited, active little boy. While some of his behaviours bother me, such as the growling and the intensity..I am trying to see them not as problems, but as personality.
I read this book "Raising the Spirited Chid" and it said, to get a child to stop a behviour such as intensity would be like asking him to stop breathing. It's pretty impossible. It's how he is hard wired.
So instead it is working on myself.
Right now I am finding it more difficult because my husband is away so often and the littlest one demands SO much of my attention. (read that - he can never be put down without screaming like his hands and feet have been cut right off!)
I know that all of this is just a phase in life and that I have to be more flexible and more understanding. I try very hard not to fly off the handle when the behaviours are manifesting. I take deep breaths and look at my children as they are - children.
Not little robots that I can control but people who are just learning and expressing themselves.
Tonight I had a "conversation" with my eldest son after the little boys went to bed.
It amazes me just how intelligent he is and how he holds things deep inside. The little things that bother him (like the baby crying) it makes me proud that he is the way he is.
The label of ADHD is really just a list of characteristics that I am happy that my son has. (and I also think a symptom of the society that they live in).
So I will embrace it, and welcome it, and live with it, and learn from it.
And love him more each day.

1 comments:

Barb said...

Great attitude!!!

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