How ADD and ADHD led to All A's for Owen

At this time last year I was banging my head against a wall, Brad and I both were. Owen was exhausting us with his defiance, frustration, and negative attitude. That is the exact opposite of how we were trying to raise our kids and our overall attempt at instilling a positive attitude and strong work ethic. It had been getting worse and worse since school started and at the time it felt like it was never going to change, that he just had an ingrained bad attitude. But looking in hindsight now, it is clear how and why he felt and acted the way he did. 

Owen did wonderfully through PreK and Kindergarten. He reversed his letters a bit, had some pretty sloppy handwriting and had a little trouble with self control, but nothing that stood out. Then in first grade we made the decision, for financial reasons, to move the kids to the local public school. It was during that time that I started to notice his reversals seemed significant. His teacher didn’t seem to think it was an issue and he was on high honor roll, likely a combo of being a pretty good kid and hanging under the radar playing in too. I was concerned with his work coming home with 100% but the answers were wrong and reversals weren’t corrected. 

In October of that year, Ian (Avery and Owen’s biological dad) showed up in Savannah totally out of the blue. He was there for a boat gig and texted me after not hearing from him in months that he had a child support check for me for 3 months back pay (of which there were many months at that point). Y’all, if you don’t believe in God/the Universe sending you exactly what you need when you need it, get on board!! I had been praying for a way to get the kids back to Hancock for a number of reasons and out of the blue my ex shows up in Savannah with enough money to make that happen until Brad and I could budget it in?? A whole other story on that later. 

So, we got the kids back to Hancock and it was a Struggle with a capital S for Owen. He was as happy as could be, so thankful to be back with his friends and in the Hancock Family where they had both truly been raised with, but his school work was falling way behind. It was easy though to chalk it up to the chunk of time that he was gone. Not only had he not moved forward, he had moved backwards from where he ended kindergarten. 

At our first parent/teacher conference his teacher noted that he seemed to have trouble following directions and focusing his attention. Of course he did, right? I mean, he was a six year old boy, didn’t all six year old boys have that problem? We decided to keep an eye on it, and on his work. He started doing extra tutoring to catch up and he continued to struggle and get more and more frustrated with school work. Doing homework became a fight every night let alone trying to do extra practice that wasn’t required. He refused to try to read anything extra than what he wanted to, and even started to carry that attitude of “if it is hard I can’t do it” to everything. 

By the end of 1st grade we had him tested. She did diagnose ADD but I wasn’t happy with her process of spending a quick 2 hours with him and throwing that out there. I also wasn’t ready to admit that ADD/ADHD was part of it. I could see him struggling academically but still thought that his behavior was all under the “seven year old active boy” umbrella. I didn’t want to medicate my son, I had always been a believer that there are some true cases, kids that you can really tell need that medicine to control themselves, but they are being over-diagnosed and used as a bandaid for behavior and easier parenting. I was absolutely pre-judging what I didn’t know much about but what society and the people around me were filling my thoughts with. 

We decided to work hard and get some professional tutoring over the summer to see if he could catch up and how his self control progressed. The walls went up further and his love for learning was dying. Looking back in hindsight, I am not surprised at all. It was getting harder and harder and he didn’t have the tools to equip him for success. It is like telling someone to build the foundation of their house with no blueprint, nothing in that little brain of his was making sense. 

So in the fall we chose a different Psychiatrist to do a more comprehensive test. I will tell you, you get what you pay for. The first one was a few hundred dollars and a surface test in an hour or so. This was multiple days and hours of different tests and the psychiatrist observing, talking to him, gathering information from home and school. His diagnosis was with ADD/ADHD along with multiple learning disabilities in processing and reading, writing and language. I cried hearing it. It was a happy cry knowing that there were answers and we could now help him, but also a cry of hurt for him that this road would be hard and thinking he was not my child that dealt well with hard things. 

I still had a wall up about the ADD/ADHD and for some reason just didn’t want to let that be true. I wanted to just treat the learning disabilities somehow thinking that he would outgrow the ADD/ADHD. What I learned though, once I pushed aside ego and listened with an open mind, was that it was a chemical imbalance. It wasn’t going to go away, it was actually going to get harder to manage for him and his lack of control and focus would become more of an issue as he was growing in age but his behavior was not reflecting that but not of his own fault. The psychiatrist explained it so well to me and I realized, if we don’t treat that ADD/ADHD, Owen will not be able to focus and retain the information needed to help him overcome the learning disabilities. We had been feeling as though the tutoring wasn’t enough because Owen wasn’t able to keep focused to learn the tools to help him succeed.

We proceeded to bring our testing results to our Pediatrician who started Owen on meds for his ADD/ADHD. The first round we tried for 4 weeks had no affect and the worry that it was not a chemical imbalance crept in. That in combo with the fact that it was $400 for a months worth without insurance made switching to a different medicine a no-brainer. We decided to try the generic for Adderall since that was the cheapest we could find that seemed to fit his needs. 

Y’all… it was instant and it was like night and day!!! The light in him was reignited immediately. All this time, he wasn’t being defiant or not listening to our directions, his inability to sit still at a meal wasn’t because he was just a fidgety kid, keeping his hands to himself not annoying his sister wasn’t intentional, interrupting, forgetting things, sitting still in class, not talking to neighbors… the list goes on… NOT HIS FAULT!!! 

Immediately the improvement was significant both at home and school. I am by no means saying the kids is perfect, but he was now acting like a true seven year old boy with more self control, an eagerness to explore and to please back, and his kindness shining brighter than anything. His confidence shot up immediately when he wasn’t getting in trouble at school or home. His school work improving on day one and the combination of tutoring, extra practice and focus had him catching up from far behind grade level to almost at grade level across the board by the end of second grade. 

His accommodations also included an app called Learning Ally which allowed him to use an iPad and headphones to listen to books on audio while following along as they highlight the text. When I tell you this was a game changer, I mean it. He not only gained a love for reading through this new opened door, he also gained the confidence in his own ability to read and is willing to read aloud or to himself without the app. He begs to read every chance he can now, it has ignited this whole new passion in him. He has recently even started reading stories to Brooks proudly and with animation.

Last week I was in Nashville for our annual company convention. The overall theme of the convention was about belief and grit, the ability to do hard things while you are not seeing results but having faith they will come. In this journey over the last year there was a lot of work with results that were invisible for months, while there was progress through benchmark assessments, Owen wasn’t feeling them with his grades still low. It was hard as a parent to keep him positive and encourage all the extra while the results weren’t yet clear. 

Earlier this week he got his first A in reading, he was complimented for his writing, and he even did a little extra work on a project that was for fun. Yesterday though, that was his moment, that smile at the top of this post is filled with pure pride in himself, in what he knows is a massive achievement. It is the first time that he has ever brought home all A’s on his weekly papers, and solid A’s too. Owen has worked so hard with the village supporting him and it is the result of some serious grit and determination that he earned those marks. 

So whatever it is you are going through, or your kids are going through… remember that it is the things in life that are hard that bring us character, that show us what we are capable of, and ultimately fill us with the most pride! 

I am an open book and willing to share more or talk to anyone going through anything hard, whether it is along this same subject line or entirely different. I can lend an ear and encouragement if ever you need some! 

#learningdisability #GRIT #determination #parenting #workingmom #hardwork #makingprogress #learninglife #ADD #Dyslexia