Noisy – Part One

I am going to write about something today that I rarely write about.  ADHD.  This is something I deal with every day but know very little about.  I should know a lot about it because it has been apart of our lives for a long time.  But even with all the research I have done, things I have read, and the people I have talked to, I am still learning.

Noisy, my daughter, has always been somewhat different pretty much all of her life.  She was always so sweet, and fragile but very active.  She loves to be the center of attention and is really funny.  She can make you laugh with her very out going personality.  I don’t mean silly, but very “on target”. She is always bouncing off the walls and always having fun.

When she turned 4, we started to notice a delay in her speech.  So I took her to a speech therapist until she started kindergarten.  It was in kindergarten that we learned she had ADHD.  Her teacher came to me about a month into school, and said she thought that ADHD might be a possibility because she had been having trouble getting into the routine of school.  She had given her time to get adjusted and should have been able to follow directions by this time. 

Since she didn’t go to pre-k, I thought maybe she just needed a little more time.  Her teacher assured me, that she needed to be evaluated.  Since her teacher had been a kindergarten teacher for a long time, I knew she knew what she was talking about.  She also told me she had 2 more children in the class that were diagnosed before school started and that it wasn’t something to be ashamed of.  So I started looking for a way to help my sweetie pea. 

I checked with her regular doctor and was sent to a behavioral therapist.  But when we went for the initial visit, I didn’t like him.  For some reason, I just didn’t like him.  I guess one reason I didn’t like him was, he told me that for the visits, he would have to spend about 30 minutes each time alone, with her, for “evaluation”.  I really, really didn’t like this at all.  So I went looking for another therapist.  I decided to call the place where we went for speech therapy and they gave me the name of a woman who they worked with.  So we went to see her.  She was a young lady and was wonderful. 

We continued to see her once a week for about a month and a half.  But the problems at school weren’t getting better.   Noisy kept getting in trouble, was sent to the office several times for the same kind of things.  She would do things like tearing the paper off crayons and shredding them.  Spilling her box of crayons so she could get down and pick them up.  She wouldn’t take turns going to the restroom and still had trouble with the everyday routines.

So after talking with the therapist, she gave me a referral to a therapist that deals mostly with children with ADHD.  I was very afraid that I might have to deal with something I had never wanted to face before.  But after talking with Noisy’s teacher everyday, and accepting that this might be something I needed help with, I called and made an appointment. 

Now, realize, that not only was she having trouble at school, she was a very trying child at home.  Loving and sweet as she was, she was still very difficult.  I thought that she just needed a little more attention, and I just had a tiger on my hands.  She would tear the stuffing out of her stuffed animals.  She would rip the leaves off plants and crumble them.  Several times, I would go to check on her at night and find she had snuck a magic marker into bed with her and had colored her whole body and the sheets and her pillows.  Nosey never did anything like the things she would do.  I still just thought this was her personality.

So, I decided this visit with this therapist, might be the thing to do.  When we went for the initial visit, he talked to me and asked me questions.  The whole time, he was watching her over in the corner playing.  After we discussed all that needed discussing, he told me that he understood and that everything would be ok.  He pointed out that I was very tense and that I kept checking on her too often.  I told him that I felt I had to incase she started tearing the paper off the walls.  There it was.  In the bottom of my stomach I realized, I was stressed out and really needed help. 

He diagnosed her with ADHD and gave me a list of options.  Herbal remedies to try, and went through a list of prescriptions to try.  He explained how they all work and let me decide where to go next.  To sum it all up, we chose the lowest dose, short acting.  He assured me that after the next day, I would see immediate change.  So we left and I took her home with me for the day.

He instructed me to give her the first dose the next morning before breakfast.  So when she was finished eating, I did.  I took her and Nosey to school that morning and told her teacher the news and she promised me to call me if there were any problems.  She told me they would watch her and make sure she ate her lunch.  I also went to the school nurse and visited with her and we talked about her second dose around noon.  She was also very kind and helped me understand that Noisy wasn’t the only one that was taking medication and that it helped the others very well. 

I have to tell you, I went home and cried.  I cried like a baby.  I was now an official mother of a child with a problem I had to help.  I was so scared that I had damaged this creature from God and that I was the worst mother on the planet.  What was I doing??  How could this be??  What if the medication made her zombie fied?? What if she died from the meds?  What if she went crazy and they had to restrain her??  What if??  What if??  I was lost.

I had a horrible day.  So when I went to pick my children up after school that day, I went to pick Nosey up first. I was terrified and had trouble walking to her classroom to talk to her teacher.  When I got there, she told me to let the kids play while we talked.  Oh my, here comes the bad news.  But guess what?  She had nothing but good to say.  She said that Noisy had done beautiful that day.  That she walked right into class and started her day perfect.  They whole day went perfect.  And as I watched her and Nosey play in the corner, my heart soared with love.  She was a calm child with her personality intact.  She was the child I knew was always there.  She was with it.  She was “on target”.

Part Two Coming Up