Advice RE: ADHD son with serious struggles

momindistress
Fri, 12 Apr 2013 14:07:54 +0000

Thank you all so much for the words of advice and support-the cyber hugs are very appreciated!

All of his testing is 2 years old but we planned to have it updated this summer in preparation for college testing and so that if he CAN go to college it will be within the three year window. We met with the school psychologist and his guidance counselor at the start of the school year to update his 504 since what was in place freshman year didn’t work. He meets regularly with his ADHD doctor and weekly with his life coach. The coach has changed from trying to get him on track academically to managing his anxiety and ways to minimize it.

Home schooling wouldn’t really be an option. First of all, I think he and I would kill each other and secondly, I think we need to focus more on getting him away from his “friends”. We could certainly control his access to them if he went to school at home but he needs to be in a setting where he can make better friends.

He has kind of “checked out” of things. He isn’t doing a sport right now, he’s lost interest in drawing, and nothing we suggest to him or offer to do with him or pay for him to do is accepted. Again, at 16 and 6’2, I can’t drag him places and make him do them.

We are doing tutoring just so he can pass but like travelnut said, the academic side of things is really our lowest priority now although if he was doing better, I think he’d feel better.

We are going to make him shadow at the small private school here and we’ve already made arrangements for him to spend some time this summer at an ADHD/academic/adventure camp. He is less than enthused about the camp but resigned to going.

Thanks so much everybody-just getting this off my chest has helped too.