Dealing with ADHD and Other Problems in Young Children?

A Worried Parent asks: "My 6yo daughter has been diagnosed with ADHD and is currently taking a certain stimulant whose name starts with R. I don't like it, but for the moment her happiness has improved, as opposed to when she's not medicated where she appears unhappy and frustrated with her inability to find her way in the world. She's sat through an IQ test, and the result was 147, which means she's better at doing IQ tests than 99.9% of 6 year olds. I wasn't that surprised but her teachers were, she's very clever but has difficulty following instructions - which is kind of a requirement in a classroom environment. If she's in a group of kids being given instructions she'll be looking at something else, playing with the grass, singing quietly to herself, etc. She'll suddenly become aware of all the kids wandering off to follow said instructions and then panic because she wasn't paying attention. In a group of people her attention just sort of switches off. I don't think this is something she can change. Any thoughts on how to help? Don't bother quoting the books on this one, i'm after first hand experiences. (i've read enough books :p)"

"Whatever the cause, she is quite different than most kids her age. I was much the same at her age and it was a pretty difficult way to grow up. I'd like to do what i can to make things easier for her.

Given that the Slashdot audience appears to mostly belong to the geekier end of the curve, is there any advice you can impart on parenting the geeky child... whether it comes from what did and didn't work for you as a kid, or what does and doesn't work for you as a parent of an obviously 'different' child.

Discipline is a bit of a problem but nothing that can't be handled. My biggest concern is that she'll grow up resenting her intelligence and being generally unhappy with who she is. The statistics are fairly clear on what happens to kids who grow up unhappy and with a low self esteem. Especially for a girl, in whom geekiness is seen as less socially acceptable.

Any advice?

Comments

Re:Doers it really exist?

[Chacham]

For a basic introduction, go to http://www.keirsey.com. He based his work on the MBTI. The MBTI is Meyers-Briggs Type Inventory. Their book, printed many years after the MBTI came out is Girsts Differing.

The rest of the letters are types. Each of the sixteen types has four letters. Keirsey groups them into four groups, with the SP being the energetic Artisan, and the NT being the scholarly Rational. The two introverted (hence "I") of the NTs are INTP and INTJ. INTP is the space cadet, or the absent minded professor. Albert Einstein was a classic INTP. INTJs, Keirsey's "Mastermind", are the rarest type (for women or overall, for men the rarest is INFP). Neils Bohr was an INTJ.

Perspectives from someone with ADHD

[Anonymous Coward]

Ok, I am pretty much in the same situation as your daughter, about two decades older. I started on Ritalin, but that aggravated my Tourette's Syndrome, so I had to stop taking it. After trying five other brain-altering drugs, I stopped them altogether.

Now I'm facing the same kinds of panic as your daughter, on a fairly regularly basis.

Is there an easy way to deal with it? I am very sorry to tell you, there is not: there never will be. The hardest thing for me and your daughter, the hardest thing of all, is the lack of understanding from other people. You can't make it easier, you can't "solve" the problem, you can't even improve it more than about 30% overall. But you can accept and support, to the limits of your patience.

In the adult world it is shocking how incapable people are of empathy. They simply cannot envision the validity of a different life experience from their own. I encounter this time and time again. Here is the classic scenario, one your daughter will encounter throughout the rest of her life:

Average: Do you do what I asked?

Fringe: Uh, no.

Average: Why not?

Fringe: I really meant to, but I forgot, or I was caught up in something else.

Average: What, you don't care?

Fringe: No, not at all! I really meant to do it. I'm sorry.

Average: Was it too hard?

Fringe: No, that's not it.

Average: So, you can do it, and you had the time, but you just didn't do it?

Fringe: Uh, yes.

Average person: If you wanted to get it done, and you had the time, then why didn't you just schedule the time and do it?

At this point, no average person I have ever met is capable of understanding why, even though I had the time, I did not get it done. None of them. As if for them, having time is the same as getting things done. Well, they won't ever understand, and I've given up trying to make them. At this point in my life, I avoid forming obligations with socially-adept personalities.

Like your daughter, I am also at the high end of the IQ scale, about 152. My memory recall is terrific, I can absorb material about an order of magnitude faster than others and recall nearly all of it -- when something interests me. If something does not interest me, I will just fail, no matter what.

I do use lists, messages, carry a tape recorder, have intricate systems for tracking e-mail and TODO items, use financial planners, day planners, goal planners, etc. They do not order my life. They keep it from the brink of irreversible chaos. I am not unintelligent or unmotivated, I simply cannot achieve the level of self-sufficiency that appears simple to ordinary people. In fact, it is so simple, so automatic for the average person, that I imagine this is why they cannot fathom how my life gets so unraveled. Such is the story of AD(H)D. And it is this lack of understanding that is the Enemy.

Those lacking both tact and empathy tend to get aggressive, or call me complacent, lazy, you name it. To them, the shambles of my daily life is a direct result of not caring enough. If I only cared enough! If I only tried hard enough! This is their mantra, because for them, effort equals result. This metric of success is so ingrained in our culture that it has taken me nearly fifteen years to free myself of it. If you could start with your daughter, teaching her that quality can exceed quantity in value, you will be doing her future self a world of good.

Yet my situation is not from complacency. By no means. You cannot imagine how angry, how frustrated I get at myself. All the punishments those uncaring people savor in their minds, thinking how they could beat me into submission, I have already tried. I constantly (read: daily, hourly) forget the most basic essentials of life. I forget them regularly, even after repeating them to myself about ten times, and writing them down on a list. I think, "Ok, if I do nothing else, I have to make sure I do this." Then a phone call comes in, I hang up and leave. Yup, not remembering what I tried so hard to remember. This happened just last night... again.

Life, regular day-to-day life, is very hard. No one believes how hard it is. Like Tantalus, I struggle with the unachievable goal of reliability and consistency. I long for these ideals, worship them in my social consciousness, but whenever I get close, the energy of trying breaks me down. No matter what efforts I make, I can reach 95% at best -- and then for only couple of days before sliding into organizational purgatory.

The average person seems to achieve 95% without thinking, and 100% by good old will-power and motivation. While refusing to accept any other human dynamic. If you lack 100%, you must lack will-power and motivation. Period. No discussion. You having trouble? Well, then you are either lazy or unmotivated.

Above all other things, this pivotal issue is what your daughter needs to understand and become self-secure about. Because ADHD has a flip side, one not often talked about among parents: It offers immense creativity, spurts of intense activity, and a more relaxed approach to life in general. My organizational life may suck, but my inner life is richer than in childhood -- this time with concepts relevant to the outside world, and even my employer. For example, if my group is stuck on a problem, I can sit down and throw out ideas left and right until I find one that works. Thinking of new ideas is not hard, in fact. Delivering the completed idea, that is hard.

Without people like me, I think society would stagnate. The "average people" who are so busy and self-composed, "don't have time" for my kinds of interests. They see my life as unproductive, unfocused, unsuccessful. Never mind that every few years a brilliant idea comes out that no one had considered. Those ideas they accept begrudgingly -- if at all -- and then promptly forget.

Beware of taking this approach with your daughter. Unfortunately, it will be automatic. People have a tendency to judge the actions of others as if they had done them (i.e., they read their own personal meaning into another's actions). You will have to struggle to understand her, just as she will struggle to adapt somewhat to your world.

If you can offer her a deep, objective understanding of this: that yes, life will be a challenge, but in the end she has gifts that no one else has, and you like her as she is and don't wish she would change "for the better": then she will flower in that atmosphere of love and encouragement. They won't be the kind of gifts you want, and they won't seem valuable to you (rarely does the ordinary world understand the value of an extra-ordinary idea right away), but learning to have faith and suspend your world-view for the sake of understanding find has rewards far beyond this particular problem.

Your daughter's life can be very rich indeed, if you accept that you will never achieve a mutual understanding of what "rich" means. It will be harder for her to get along than for you, but that doesn't mean her soul cannot thrive within its own context. Love and encouragement; these are the most important thing! Even if she fails school (and I have failed many a class) don't fear excessively! Creative people have the oddest happen of coming up with a solution where you thought no solution could exist.

Just ask me, a C student whom all my teachers labelled as "bright, though not achieving what he could if he applied himself." Now I make a six-figure salary -- earned by own hard work -- and contribute meaningfully, in many ways, to my workplace and my community. The people around me have learned to accept what I can offer, and I have learned not to make promises I can't fulfill. On average, it is a rather happy situation. But it doesn't look anything like "normal".

From a lifetime ADHDer

Re:Doers it really exist?

[elmegil]

I have a fair amount of sympathy for your perspective, and a few years ago, I probably would have said almost exactly the same thing (except I'm lucky enough that the mother of my son is not unstable).

However, I think there's a middle road. I have chronic depression issues. USUALLY they are manageable by willpower/behavior mod, but, in the winter, and under times of extra stress, those things do not suffice. After making my wife EXTREMELY miserable one season, we started investigating other means to deal with my issues (keep in mind that I think 99% of all shrinks are quacks who went to school to try and fix themselves, and I hate the idea of a drug that dulls my mind--my brother has a more severe version of my problems, and spent quite a long time on many "fine" drugs).

Turns out, if I get regular doses of vitamin B (standard stresstabs) and 5-HTP (a mood stablizing supplement) I only become unbearable every once in a great while. In the winder, a full spectrum light also helps a lot.

While I cannot absolutely rule out placebo effects, since a study of one individual is meaningless, I'm pretty convinced that there are brain chemical issues involving seratonin that do predispose you toward certain mood disorders. It is probably also useful to note that I also once experimented with Choline, a so-called "smart drug" that affects your seratonin levels, and ended up in one of the blackest, foulest depressions I've ever had, and ended almost as soon as I stopped the Choline--that can't really be written off to placebo effect, since I expected something quite the opposite.

I absolutely agree that the pharmaceutical companies are not in it for my best interests, and if they could, they'd sell us all the soma they could make. But that doesn't mean that all the science is junk. It just means that, like everyone else, they're using the facts and statistics to lie for their own benefit. The right stuff, in my opinion, is that serotonin is a key mood regulator. The wrong stuff is that we need their drugs to control it. There are means that don't dope you and don't cost a lot (diet, supplements, sunlight or equivalents) that are as effective if not more in all but the most extreme cases.