Placebo and exercise, especially structured exercise, can have powerful benefits 
And sometimes kids learn to manage behaviors.
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There are many, many things mislabeled as “possible ADHD”. One of the very overlooked issues (just as an example) is sleep apnea in kids. So many things can “look” like components of ADHD, that are not. Just sayin’.
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Agree. Thyroid, food sensitivities/allergies, easily correctible vision or hearing problems. Important to have a comprehensive physical to rule out the easy stuff before falling down the rabbit hole of misinformation. (The link between cooking in aluminum pots and ADHD? I hear that one a lot from young parents in my neighborhood…) So you go out and buy Le Creuset and you think your kid is going to be cured???
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If Diagnosed… Developmental Optometry and biofeedback. If biofeedback it also depends who. I have seen dramatic results.
If in Chicagoland I got referrals for you.
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Not an expert here but I have two very bright kids with LDs. ShawD was diagnosed with ADHD as a freshman in HS – a HS psychologist suggested we get her diagnosed. We had not diagnosed sooner because she had a concerning medical issue that took all of our attention – she was diagnosed, incorrectly it turns out, with a degenerative eye disease that would have left her legally blind in a few years. In hindsight, the ADHD was obvious. For her entire childhood, she was unable to sit through dinner (we got what one of my friends described as a floor show – dance, cartwheels, etc.). She was prescribed Ritalin and it instantly made her a better student. She watched half of a documentary on epigenetics before taking Ritalin and half after and she said she got so much more from the second half. Ritalin does not work for everyone. A psychiatrist friend said, “Ritalin is a great drug for the people it is a great drug for.” Over time, she shifted from trying to do OK to wanting to be the best in her class. She always expected to go to college, so that was never an issue, but she was closer to the middle of the class and ended up closer to the top. In college and grad school, she was at the top. She is a NP who is now the medical director of two clinics, supervising the work of NPs, MDs and PAs, the vast majority of whom are older than she is. She does primary care now, which means lots of short appointments, which is good for ADHD. She is studying currently for a certificate to do psychiatric mental health as she is planning for a transition from primary care. Psychiatric mental health would be fewer daily appointments, I would think, so she will have to figure out how to manage that.
ShawSon has a panoply of LDs including ADHD. Ritalin makes him angry. Adderall helped somewhat but not as impressively as Ritalin helped ShawD.
@knowstuff, we did try developmental optometry (or was it called behavioral optometry?). No success there on ADHD, but it was critical to ShawD getting her vision back. Did not try biofeedback, though ShawD gravitated to yoga starting at age 3 and actually went, by her choice to summer camp at an Ashram, where the kids woke up at 5 or 6 to do service and then meditated for over an hour. At age 18, the youngest age where she could study to be a yoga instructor, she was certified.
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Our son, also 16, is in a similar situation. He’s a junior this year. I agree with nearly everything others have said here.
Our kid has been through plenty of testing, and seen lots of professionals, which started young because he’s dyslexic/dysgraphic. He’s also been to lots of therapy and has tried different meds for his anxiety / ADHD. We’ve tried SO many things behaviorally.
We’ve always been super low pressure on grades, and focused on overall wellbeing and health. Our kids have always known they don’t need to attend college if they don’t want to. He’s bright, and has been mostly in honors classes. His grades are decent (above 3.0), but he’s had some real duds.
I could write a novel, but I’ll tell you where we’ve arrived. He went off all his meds cold turkey without telling us for a while. He’s on a couple meds now (one for anxiety, the other for ADHD), but that took some trial and error. There was one horrible period where he did nothing social for an entire year and barely smiled. It was awful and may have been the Vyvanse in his case.
It’s VERY important to him to have agency, and we have to tread cautiously with that because he has trouble telling us what he really wants. He often has trouble even knowing what he wants, let alone communicating it. He is at the age where it backfires bigtime if it’s not explicitly his decision. Even if we aren’t aware he disagrees, he pushes back (with his actions, perhaps subconsciously) against things that he doesn’t feel are his own choices.
He quit therapy a while ago, right after I found him a phenomenal psychologist. My spouse and I kept seeing her to improve our parenting of him, and her help has been revolutionary. He takes some meds now, though he says he doesn’t think they really help him (the adults in his life think they do). It is very much his own decision.
At some point a few years ago we were at our wit’s end and basically had to let go of a lot. Even though we were always low pressure with school, we’d try to help him with organizational skills, deadlines, time management, etc. It was grueling and not very successful.
We asked him what he thought we should do (after a bunch of behavioral stuff hadn’t worked), and he said “let me fail”. His therapist agreed. So we stepped back even further to almost no involvement with his schooling. That’s our natural state (we had very little to do with our elder kid’s schooling). But that’s harder to do when a kid’s grades are so bimodal (a bunch of A’s, B’s and zeros).
Since then he’s had his blunders for sure, but he attends school, his teachers all like him, he’s still doing the honors diploma, and he gets passing semester grades in his required classes (that was our one grades request). He has an IEP for his dysgraphia so he has a special ed teacher who he loves. She also offers executive functioning support but he doesn’t take advantage of it much. He’s mentally stable (!!!), independent, kind and loving and respectful, and he does things with friends regularly.
We made him get a job once he quit all his extracurriculars (sigh), and that’s been one of the best things he’s done in his life. It transformed him.
He avoids conversations about his post-grad plans. But recently said “I just can’t see myself at college”, which we totally support. We’re both professors and see firsthand what happens when people don’t truly want to be in college.
We tried to get him to explore vocational / trades programs and he wasn’t interested. He seems motivated to work. I think he wants a full time job after graduation, which would be our requirement to live at home anyway. And we’ll help him transition to independent adulthood as he figures out who and what he wants to be.
Not sure if our experiences offer any help, but just know that you’re not alone. And learning when to push and when to let go is so hard to do, but is important. The most important thing is the child’s wellbeing and transition to adulthood, and it isn’t always easy to figure out how to best facilitate that.
edited to add a p.s.:
My spouse is similar to our son mentally / emotionally and wishes all the resources available to our son had been their experience. Our kid is miles ahead in the mental health and emotional coping game of where my spouse was at the same age.
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I want to echo a couple of things @ColdWombat said. Like @cinnamon1212, we had someone who helped ShawSon in middle school, high school and the beginning of college on organizational/exec function issues. She had access to his email account as in HS and especially in college, much of the communication between teachers and students about work requirements and tests came via email. He stopped needing the help during college. We asked her to help ShawD but that didn’t work. ShawD’s HS had a person who helped with work planning and held an after-school study hall where she could be consulted. ShawD liked that. In her first college, the disabilities services office connected her with a junior or senior with the same major who could prepare her each week with what was going to be required in her main courses (chemistry, biology, calculus, developmental psych) and how to plan for it. She transferred and I encouraged her to get tutors early on in any course that was tough.
I agree with @ColdWombat that it would be a mistake to send a kid to college until he knows why he wants to be there. In a world in which AI automates many functions that college graduates now do, being able to work with one’s hands (electrician, plumber HVAC) will remain attractive occupations.
Per @jym626’s comment, I always thought that there was a real link between ShawD’s anxiety and her ADHD. If she felt time pressure, she became very anxious and could not focus and would put something just to put down an answer. When the school gave her extra time on tests, her anxiety would be reduced and she was better able to focus. So, Ritalin and extra time both made a difference for her.
I am a big proponent of gap years. ShawSon took a gap year and took ACT/SATs and applied to college during his gap year. He said he felt more mature his freshman year than many of his classmates and that he had a better sense of why he was there. We encouraged ShawD to take a gap year but she did not want to. She transferred at the end of her first semester for reasons not having to do with performance and really matured at her new school. I think a gap year would have been good for her as well, but she really wanted to finish school and start working as fast as possible.
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Same for C26, but not quite in the same way. C26 is a good test taker and doesn’t need extra time,but would get major anxiety from the steadily growing pile of zeroes and effect on grades. The combination of meds and executive function coaching (we had tried EF coaching alone before then to no avail) helped get the work under control, and as they felt more in control their anxiety reduced - it basically went from a vicious cycle to a virtuous one. But absolutely, one hundred percent agree with you that executive function management is key. We are lucky enough to get that through the school /IEP but judging from various online groups that seems pretty rare (at least, to get it done in terms of coaching skills so that the student can graduate to doing it all one their own at some stage).
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@queens-mom, I have a few additional thoughts.
My kids were eager to take the meds. So that was not a battle in our case, though reading/writing were physically painful to my son and getting him to be willing to try (in 2nd and probably 3rd grade) was something of a battle.
One of the basic social psychological principles of persuastion is social proof: Others like you have done this and it has worked. I wonder if it would be helpful for your son to talk to or read about other bright kids with LDs who have been able to succeed/surmount the issues (and in the cae of ADHD, sometimes use their ADHD in a way that helps)?
To you, it may be helpful to know that many kids succeed, although not necessarily in the most direct route. When ShawSon was younger, his SLP grandmother thought his issues were so severe that he would not be able to attend college. Both of my kids, who are in their early 30s, did better and better as they progressed. Both graduated summa cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa (or equivalent) from college. ShawD, who used to give us floor shows every night at dinner because she could not sit still through dinner, is now the medical director of two primary care clinics. ShawSon, whose LDs seemed in ways more debilitating than ShawD’s, was named to the 30 under 30 list of a major business publication.
I was always clear that my job as a parent was to give them the training, tools and support to lead a satisfying adult life. How to best provide that path really depends upon the kid.
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I think Shaw’s family story is inspiring- but I know it sounds scary to think of your 16 year old kid who struggles somehow graduating cum laude, Phi beta Kappa, etc.
There are OTHER ways to succeed!!!
I know kids who have struggled significantly who also emerged as complete adults- even if their academic triumphs were nowhere near as impressive as Shaw’s kids. There’s such a thing as emotional intelligence- think of the most talented counselor at your local hospice, the funeral director that grieving families still call months after their loss because he’s such an empathetic listener, the guidance counselor at your middle school who kids consider a “rock star”, the mortgage advisor at your bank who walked you through the in’s and out’s of PMI, HUD, and all the other foreign three-letter acronyms and spent hours with you making sure you understood everything that would happen at closing. I recently learned that a friend’s horrific (and sometimes fatal, but not in this case) disease was caught by an alert dental hygienist who flagged a weird fluid after a routine cleaning.
I think the goal is to help your kid figure out his own “Why” and then provide the tools to get there. Setting this up as a binary process (you either graduate cum laude or you are a failure) is a little Darwinian, no? Even kids WITHOUT ADHD aren’t always academic superstars and they also deserve to have their own talents recognized.
The guy who sold me my Honda? If there was an award for “Lifetime achievement while selling fuel efficient cars” he’d be there. The last recall (needed a software upgrade, you had to bring the car in and leave it there for the day) I got the form letter from Honda but had already scheduled my appointment, thanks to my proactive salesman. And when he said “your loaner will be waiting for you when you get here” he was right.
There are a lot of ways to be outstanding.
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It’s expensive, but The Forman School has a summer program. Sometimes kids aren’t excited about college until they think they can be successful. Your son would be at the older end of the students, but the counselors are Forman alum and great role models.
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Thanks, @blossom. My sentence, “it may be helpful to know that many kids succeed, although not necessarily in the most direct route” was intended to allude to the various ways of being successful, but then I immediately pivoted to my kids’ stories and lost the thread I was intending to start with. Glad you said what I was hoping to say, and much better.
I believe that succeeding in most ways usually involves figuring out what one is good at and and then organizing work and even academics around what one is good at. What one is good at need not be the set of skills that gets to summar cum laude. Many of the best corporate sales people I’ve dealt with had not been academic stars. One of my favorite students, albeit at an elite MBA program, was not the academically brightest of my students by a long ways. However, in his last job before business school, he had been responsible for removing all of the US’s nuclear weapons from Korea. This is a guy I would trust in a heartbeat to implement a marketing plan or to manage operations.
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Agree! With college, they can create a schedule that works better for them - time between classes to clean up their notes, to get outside, attend a club meeting, etc.
My ADHD, low executive functioning DC did really well by going part time to CC (3 classes/9-11 credits each semester) and working part time. The change of pace was great for them (not all school and not all work). Plus having a job was great for improving their time management skills and learning other skills that come from having a job.
They eventually transferred to a state school (where they never took more than 4 classes a semester).
Living at home also helped - in addition to managing college classes, they did not also have to manage living with someone new, the social scene, etc.
It is all about finding that path that works for you.
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We had the same issue with our daughter. Parental involvement short of micromanagement worked with her, but also, she was ambitious and generally did her work, especially when she got into high school. Every kid is different. If he doesn’t want to go to college, there are plenty of well-paid hands-on careers he can do, most of which are done at community college.
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I would just point out the OP has never returned to read any responses, and last was on CC on January 18, the day they created this thread.
Drive-by posters are a pet peeve of mine.
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And not to pile on, but I have an ADHD kid and I have two grandchildren now.
Nothing to add re the ADHD discussions … well covered, but I’ll note that medication was the game changer for mine.
Re pre-school being concerned about a boy’s behavior, let me just share a cautionary note about that:
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Pre-school people are seldom qualified to do anything more than share personal observations, and more often than not what they’re really doing is telling you what they do and don’t want to have to deal with.
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Anecdatally, there are many pre-schools (at least here in the Seattle area and in the greater Miami area) that expect more out of 2 to 3 year old boys than they are designed to offer. While some little boys are quiet, docile, gentle and want to sit in circles and do directed activities, many, many perfectly normal little boys are not. When you have a pre-school run by people who want the former, the latter is a F’ING DISASTER and you have to take that kid out because he’s going to get the “bad kid” label and then the nitpicking starts. Once the nitpicking starts, predictably the adults start to drive that kid crazy, he acts out and the vicious circle has been established.
Just went through this and advocated for my grandson with a pre-school director at a school that (like all of them) advertises itself as warm and welcoming, but what they really need to do is hang up a sign that says, “We’re here to care for quiet, docile children who are easily directed.” I’m sure it’s a coincidence that they don’t have an outdoor play area.
The professionals tell you: pre-K little boys, with or without attention struggles, are not supposed to learn by sitting in circles. They learn by playing and they need a lot of grace. Little girls have more capacity for circle time, but even they are supposed to be playing most of the time. That is how they learn most of the things they need to learn until about 3 to 4. That’s what the experts say, that’s consistent with my experience and when you find a pre-school that understands that you have won for your son. My D and her husband did.
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It’s certainly an annoyance, particularly when advice has been very specific towards the OP. But even though OP appears to have ghosted us, I do think that a number of the comments have been extremely helpful and will be good for future lurkers/researchers as much of the advice is more general in nature rather than a Match Me post with very specific wants.
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I have two boys, one is high IQ/ADHD and socially awkward, and the other is high IQ/ADHD, confident, and a bit belligerent. We were lucky to get them both diagnosed early, and they have been on medication since grade school. This may not apply to your situation, but this is what we did to help them:
- Medication - Meds have been tremendously helpful for both boys. The doctors had to experiment with different scripts when they were young, but once we found the right combination it made all the difference.
- Counseling - We had both boys in counseling for different reasons. The awkward son needed help with social queues, and the other controlling his emotions. Both needed coaching on executive functioning.
- Private school - We enrolled our awkward son in a school for “smart kids” where there were many neurodivergent students with ADHD, aspergers, mild autism, etc., and the faculty understood how to work with them. It was the kind of school where some seventh graders were taking Calculus, and their unofficial motto was “high school will be a repeat”. Our belligerent son stayed in public school because they offered better support for his issues.
- Activities that fit their strengths and personalities - Our awkward son was a STEM kid, so we got him into Science Olympiad in junior high and First Robotics in high school. Our belligerent son we steered toward sports, 4H and horses where he could burn off energy.
Both have improved as they grew older, and we are in a good place now. The awkward son is a junior studying MechE, and belligerent one is pulling good grades in HS and holds leadership positions in 4H. There were some rough years in there, and we were not sure how things would turn out, but I think we are past the worst of it.
I noticed one of the parents here mentioned other paths besides college. My STEM son and I went to an info session for a program that trains kids in the manufacturing trades - machinists, CNC operators, programmers, mechtronics techs, etc. It was part of the school system and paid for with property taxes, and the program had great outcomes. If he didn’t want to go to college, this would have been a great fit for him.
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