While not officially diagnosed with ADHD, my teacher, principal, and school counselor sat my parents down for a meeting when I was in the 5th grade to discuss putting me on Ritalin because they felt I presented the symptoms of an ADHD kid (this was in the early 90's). I can relate to a lot.of what you wrote, and what is in that article.


FWIW, I never went on meds but found refuge in exhaustion and creative outlets. I got in to playing music and took up the drums. I got in to highly regimented sports like rowing and swimming. I found that I focus best and am most calm after a lot of hard work.

Career wise I ended up in construction and now run a small business, which is a great fit for me because it is a physical, creative job that is also mentally challenging. The biggest hurdle for me you need to be highly organized, detail oriented, and deal with multiple projects at once. There are a lot of moving parts to consider when you have four people's houses completely torn apart, schedules changing constantly, clients going back and forth on various decisions, etc. Usually that could cause a massive shit storm of paralyzing anxiety in the hectic windstorm of thoughts my mind can become, but I have learned to deal with that through simple self-discipline, prioritization, and the help of a counselor.

As for school subjects I excelled in, math was always very calming. I could listen to music and do math for hours without feeling the time pass. I did well with sciences. I could look at diagrams in anatomy and physiology, understand and memorize them almost instantly while friends had to constantly study them to grasp them. Reading a book on a deadline? Forget about it. Writing an essay? It would get done but at the very last minute.


It took me a long time to realize what I was dealing with and how it influenced my life choices as I became an adult. Good on you for wrapping your heads around this now.

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Long Chile was a silly place.

Never diagnosed, but lots of people at work tell me I have it. Reading that article, yeah there are lots of me in there. Have often wondered how to shut off my brain, I don't understand how people, don't think about stuff all the time.

Now for the personal background I am a 51 yr old who is an Engineer at GM. I work the test side of the world so it always something different and often on my feet. But I have been know to leave a test to get a roll a tape and not return for 3 or 4 hrs cause, this happened then that and then someone needed help and oh there was this other thing.... Now most people don't let me go get the tape.. LOL . but I am serious. If they need me, they don't let me go.

Fortunet for me I like problem solving and am good at math, so engineering was fun and I have done pretty well at it.

Carreer options, follow her passion, hopefully she can figure out what she likes to do. 2 of my 3 did, the third is entering her Jr yr of HS and still doesn't know ...

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Just Triing
Triathlete since 9:56:39 AM EST Aug 20, 2006.
Be kind English is my 2nd language. My primary language is Dave it's a unique evolution of English.

I find it extremely interesting that you both do well in math and yet my daughter struggles there. I think she has and additional problem, as yet diagnosed. when it comes to viewing and computing numbers. She calls it dyslexia, but it really doesn't fit that category according to her old docs. We're meeting some new docs this week that I hope will give us some fresh insight both on her condition and the meds she takes. I am curious if either of you have trouble sleeping? My kids talks a lot in her sleep and I think not getting a good night sleep is another problem we have to overcome.

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"The great pleasure in life is doing what people say you cannot do."

I would start by expressing your concern to the psychologist. Ask whats being done and when you and your child should expect to see changes in behavior.

Many kids blame unwanted behavior on ADD rather than taking ownership of how they chose to respond to what they are feeling.

A little late to this discussion but it caught my eye.

Yes there is a math learning disability like dyslexia. It is called dyscalculia. You can find lots of info about it online.


According to her evaluation, my daughter has ADHD and ODD (oppositional defiant disorder). She is 10. When she was 6 weeks old she started rolling over regularly and I knew then that something was different. She is very smart but has an extremely low frustration tolerance. I think of her mind like a television that never stops changing channels. We started a low dose of meds with her when she was in 3rd grade because her symptoms were escalating at home. Up to that point we had managed her symptoms with diet eliminations, fish oil supplements, limited electronics and chiropractor visits. Living with ADHD is no joke. Things are so much harder for her than her brother but her mind has some of the coolest ideas I would never think of.

Math homework always brings on some kind of screaming fit for my daughter but she gets A's. She has a 504 plan for school, not an IEP. The 504 is very basic, no cursive (takes her 2x as long to complete something in cursive and then it is illegible), homework limit to 45 min with no penalty but we always make her finish her homework, graded only on what she finishes of timed math facts, she is allowed fidgets or breaks as needed, she has adapted math homework papers which help her keep on the correct assignment. It's amazing how many times she would get her math homework done only to realize she had done the wrong assignment.

I feel like ADHD is very misunderstood. It's so much more than the kid who can't sit still. It's a lack of focus, organization, impulse control and emotional regulation can really be a struggle. I'm a teacher and have worked with several ADHD students in the last couple of years who are SMART, the work comes easy but the emotional challenges of getting through a day of school prove to be the most difficult part of the day.

Thanks for sharing your story. I can feel your pain, frustration and understanding. I will look into dyscalculia. We have an appointment with my daughter's doctor tomorrow and I will bring this up.

We just recently discovered that if she doesn't take her pill in the afternoon her appetite increases immensely. She's gained almost 6 pounds in the last 2 months and is a happier and more cooperative child.

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"The great pleasure in life is doing what people say you cannot do."

I've got really bad ADD combined with dyslexia.

In terms of careers, find something/anything she's good at and latch on to a good manager.

My career has been a love me or hate me relationship with regard to my managers. I'm fortunate enough to have some very good skills that are hard to find which makes me a good fit for my job. I've only really had a problem with a handful of managers, and in each case I was dealing with someone who got to where they were through hard work and good organizational skills instead of talent. That's a recipe for being frustrated with my weaknesses and threatened by my strengths.

In short, very organized people tend to think of people with ADD as having attitude problems because they can't conceive of someone not being organized. To them you can't "forget" to do something you just agreed to do 5 minutes ago, so they see it as a childish excuse coming from someone who just doesn't care enough to follow through.

I can only imagine you've probably felt the same way about your daughter (as most parents would). I remember telling one manager, "Dave, I've been getting yelled at for this since I was 5 years old. Do you honestly think that you are the one who's going to motivate me to just snap out of it?"

The biggest help for me was really working on getting an organizational system down and taking the time to just slow down and write things down. "Yeah, yeah....I got it........no, wait, I don't. Repeat that, but give me a minute it to write it down."

At the end of the day, she'll need to recognize where her strengths are and accept her weaknesses. I was asked to take a job as a manager this year and I turned it down. I told my boss, "I currently don't read most of my email. I'm pretty sure that's a necessary skill for management."

Anyway, good luck. Its not so bad.

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-----------------------------Baron Von Speedypants
-----------------------------RunTraining articles here:
http://forum.slowtwitch.com/...runtraining;#1612485

Lots to say on this, I grew up with people around me with ADHD (my dad and brother) career wise I really wouldn't stress out to much my dad was a successful accountant that wasn't diagnosed until he was 40. He simply learned coping mechanisms to get through his day. This is what I will do with my son as well, he can do what he wants and if he is determined enough he will find coping mechanisms.

My son (12) also has ADHD and has been on medication for about 5 years, we currently are using concerta and it is the best we have found for him. I am very surprised that your doctor or pharmacist didn't cover side effects, most common ADHD medications are stimulants so common side effects are lack of appetite and insomnia. It sounds like you are using a short acting medicine, which depending on when the medication is taken can really impact sleep and eating. The concerta is good for about 12 hours for us, so it is once a day and has worn off before he goes to bed.

My son's struggles are in writing and translation speed, if he has to look at a symbol that represents a letter and then write it down he is deadly slow (around 20ith percentile). I think different learning disabilities are frequently associated with ADHD but are very hard to accurately diagnose so get skipped over.

If you have questions, especially about medications let me know.

My youngest daughter, now 14, has been diagnosed with ADHD and OCD for about 2 years now.


My son is now 14 and was diagnosed as borderline ADHD in kindergarten and in a few follow up sessions over the years. We pulled him out of public schools and into a private one and choose to go a non medication route. The school worked with us and he made a lot of progress in a lot of areas. At this point I'm not 100% convinced we made the right choice.



During his first diagnosis the psychiatrist mentioned that ADHD often comes thru the father and asked me a few questions and kind of insinuated that indeed I may be ADHD. When I read thru that article there is very little of it that does not apply to me.



I had been seeing people on and off over my life, doctors, therapists etc etc for various things from physical to marriage counseling and had hit on this subject almost every time but never where able to nail it down.

For me a side effect was complete and utter exhaustion, exasperation and despair...which seems a lot like depression. The seeming inability to not be able to de-emphaize importance of things was often overwhelming, again, exhausting. When the toilet clogging causes causes the same amount of stress as having a serious health issue you're constantly in a world of anxiety. When finishing an Ironman seems no more of a reward than finishing the dishes you're constantly in state deprivation.

This has been my life since I can recall. The effects have clearly gotten worse as I got older or maybe they haven't, maybe my ability to ignore them, my "Willpower" has weakened. Who knows.

In any case about a year and a half ago I finally broke down and saw a psychiatrist and did VERY well on the depression test, 100% in fact. I'm not entirely convinced that I have depression and that the depression may simply be a side effect of the ADHD symptoms. In any case for the last year or so I've been taking a low dosage of Welbutrin which is a dopamine uptake inhibitor. For me the effect was pretty quick although not earth shattering. I like to describe it like having a minor constant long term pain slowly go away.

You know how your day is when you have a back ache, or head ache or something like that. Everything is more difficult to do, concentration is off and by the end of the day you're simply shot, exhausted despite not doing anything more then you would have on a normal day. Then on the next day you wake up and the pain is gone and the day seems so much easier...similar effect.

I only mention the above to give a bit of perspective from the adult side. There was no such thing as ADHD when I was a kid, I'll be 50 this year. I'm not even sure I would have been diagnosed if there was. I, VERY early on learned most of the coping skills in the article. I would do arts and crafts, like rice art, were I would individually place each grain of rice to make a picture. I would use my John Deere tractors to make ALL the carpeting in the house stand in rows. I would spend hours bouncing balls against the house. Anything to engage my body and mind so it was not running wild. At the same time I would, and still do, reach for new things, constantly attempting to escape the mundane as the article states. All of this would appear relatively normal and childlike if one had no idea what the inner state of that child was. One child throws the ball for the enjoyment of throwing the ball, the other throws the ball to escape the chaos within.Without question the vast majority of my life was lived doing the latter.

I watch my son very closely because of this and definitely see alot of me in him. I only hope I can help him cope better than I did and hopefully before he's 50 years old :-) Sorry for the wall of text...but it's me and something I hoped might help someone else.

~Matt

he biggest help for me was really working on getting an organizational system down and taking the time to just slow down and write things down. "Yeah, yeah....I got it........no, wait, I don't. Repeat that, but give me a minute it to write it down."

I've become addicted to MS OneNote. I'll be working on a project and will have 10 dozen ideas, options, things to do flying around. I can leave one note up and just make list after list, Tab after tab, drop in spreadsheets, pictures, animations everything. I'll go back later and nuke the stupid ideas and use the rest as a "ToDo list" and or mental notes. OneNote seems to work the way my brain works, scattered and rather non linear.



The really nice thing about this in the work place is that it is collaborative. You can have an entire room of ADHD people dropping their minds into the same notebook :-)



~Matt

Would you tell me what a depression test is? A series of question? I've never heard of such a thing. Thanks.

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"The great pleasure in life is doing what people say you cannot do."

Would you tell me what a depression test is? A series of question? I've never heard of such a thing. Thanks.

I was being a bit flippant. It really isn't a "Test" as in like a multiple choice test. In essence books like the DSM have definitions of various symptoms and the person you're talking too evaluates how many or how few of those symptoms you're experiencing as well as to what extent. There are "Tests", even online, that take these symptoms and boil them down to simple questions but I personally don't think that is nearly enough for a diagnosis...which is why we have health professionals.

In my case I was experiencing pretty much all the symptoms to a smaller or larger degree. For me however I had been experiencing them my entire life so it was "The norm".

I tend to think that for many they have a "Starting point" and a point of reference where they can easily see that "Hey it wasn't always like this". For kids and eventually those kids that grow into adults, there is no starting point so it's the norm and all they know.IMO it makes it more difficult to pin those situations down because the "Patient" has no idea that what they are experiencing isn't normal.

Matt

Some people with ADHD have impaired executive functioning skills which can make following multi-step directions, organizing information, etc difficult. This could be part of her difficulty with math. Bright kids can often cope with elementary/early middle school simply by "figure out the answer" but more advanced math requires them to follow steps.

We moved over the summer to AZ and had my daughter tested by her new school. We just got back her results today. It turns out that she is in the top 25% of kids in her class for IQ, which floored us. The problem(s) she has been identified with are with math, and with being organized. We spoke to both her Doctor and school about dysculculia, but there really is not test for it. So we are going to step up the math tutoring and remove her phone and YouTube privileges until she shows improvement. We are kind of at the point where we think that her immaturity and perhaps boredom is her worst enemy. Which actually is a prognosis a lot better than we expected.

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"The great pleasure in life is doing what people say you cannot do."

That sounds like a good plan. If you can find an experienced tutor he/she should be able to see where your child is making mistakes or dropping the ball in a problem. Good luck :)