Well, I can pretty well say that I have fallen off of the every week blog postings. Poo. I am really going to try to do better, but we are smack dab in the middle of Cheer Season and it has pretty much taken over my life. We spend 4-6 nights at the gym, and then the weekends off in other towns watching The Hive do their thing. I am not sad about it, but it cuts into my writing time. LOL!
So, this week, we are going to talk about my amazing middle child. My son, Beckett.
First and foremost, he is my favorite boy child on the planet. He is smart, and funny, and loving, and quirky, and so quick witted. He is a true middle child, that is sandwiched between two VERY drama filled sisters and he takes it in stride…..well, most of the time. He loves to read. He loves baseball, basketball, and golf. He loves Fortnite (insert eye roll here, we will come back to this). He gives the most amazing hugs, and he never fails to ask me how my day was every single day when he sees me. He and Kenzi were born less than 2 years a part. John and I had our hands full. He came into this world 3 weeks before my due date, and bigger than most kids at 40 weeks. We brought him home, Kenzi asked when we were taking him back, and he has been annoying her ever since. I completely and utterly adore him. He is a sweet, sweet baby.
BUT. About a year ago or so, I started noticing some changes in him. Now, he has literally always been easily distracted, that is nothing new and it describes most boys. But, these were different. Defiant. Mean. Being ugly to everyone around him when he didn’t get his way. Not being able to get things done. Ignoring things that I had asked him to do. Sneaking food. Sneaking things he knew he wasn’t supposed to be doing. Arguing. Always having to have the last word (…he might get this honestly, but we aren’t talking about me right now…LOL!). I used to jokingly say that he got both John and I’s worst traits….my mouth and John’s temper. Which isn’t untrue, but it has really bitten me in the butt since I said that. It is exactly what he has. He wasn’t often my sweet boy that he used to be.
John and I for the last year have stayed frustrated. I am not proud to say it, but we yelled and screamed a LOT more than we should have. It is really hard to understand a kid that just refuses to do what he’s told, or bring his homework home, or put up his laundry, or constantly try to take the easy way out even if that meant lying just to get his way. Throwing fits and saying ugly things to everyone around him. even his great-grandmother who would do anything under the stars to make him happy, because that is what great grandmothers do. We were tired of yelling, he was tired of being in trouble literally all the time. We were all frustrated.
Then one day I came across an article that a friend shared on Facebook about ADHD and it’s different types. WAIT, there are different types? Yeah, I didn’t know that either to begin with. ADHD to me always meant a kid who ran around like a chicken with their head cut off and just ran and ran and ran all the time. But, come to find out, that isn’t always true. And the more I researched, the more things started sticking out to me as things that I saw on an every day basis with Beckett. But, because I had always thought that ADHD was an over-diagnosed thing, that just meant people wanted their kids drugged up I thought there was no way that any of my kids had it. And, man did I eat my words on that one. ADHD is so much more. There are so many more things than just being hyper. So, I continued my research. And it kept making sense. But, when I brought it to John (at first) he was VERY against having him tested. He was very much a believer that he was just a defiant kid that needed discipline and a shorter leash. But, I kept bringing it up, with facts that I found and how I thought they might relate to Beckett. He really wasn’t still on board, but he thought I could talk to Beckett’s doctor at his appointment. So, I did.
Well, actually the first time that I talked to him about it was at a check up for Jensen. Beckett just went with me, and his check up wasn’t until the next week. But, since I wasn’t going to be able to be there for Beckett’s appointment and John was taking him I wanted to get some of my concerns on the table for us to have a discussion. I brought up the idea of possibly having him ADHD tested, and my doctor (who, I adore by the way) looked at me like I had grown a third arm. He looked at Beckett, who had been sitting quietly in a chair reading a book for the past 30 minutes, and back at me and simply said, “He doesn’t need ADHD testing, he looks like hes doing just fine.” And, as much as I love my doctor, and trust him. I knew in my Momma heart of hearts that something else was going on.
What his doctor didn’t see was the constant fidgeting that he did. The digging all in the back seat of my car on even a short drive because he couldn’t just sit and ride. The constant “I’m bored’’s coming from his mouth when someone wasn’t going out of their way to make sure he was entertained. The inability to finish any task that he considered even the slightest bit of an inconvenience. The inability to be told something in the kitchen and make it to his room to do what he was told. The constant back talking. The no impulse control. The food sneaking. The lying for no real reason other than just to lie. The defiance in his eyes when he wasn’t getting his way. The hateful things that came out of his mouth when he was angry. The short fuse that he had. The anxiety that people were looking at him and making fun of him. The way that he was never asleep before midnight or one o’clock because he couldn’t turn off his brain. His hyperfocus on the things that he liked to do like reading and playing Fortnite. The anger when I took his video games away. The texts from his teachers saying that he was being disruptive in class YET AGAIN and that he wasn’t himself. The reports that he seemed to not care about his work, or doing it correctly, or doing it at all. The going from an A student with no studying to a low B student. The sleeping he did during the day. The laziness that he had. The fact that he couldn’t just not talk all the time. The fact that he couldn’t control what came out of his mouth and seemed to not understand the consequences of what he was saying to the people that he loved. The frustration. The tears. The sadness. He couldn’t see that my little boy was gone, and had been replaced by something I didn’t understand. He couldn’t see that John and I felt like failures as parents because we were at the end of our rope and felt like we were out of options and fighting a losing battle. That we might permanently damage our relationship with him by trying to discipline him into being a good and productive adult. These were all the things he couldn’t see, and that made me know that I had to be his advocate, and I had to fight for him.
So, in late October, after talking with a fellow ADHD Mom that reached out to me to give me some resources (you know who you are, i am so thankful for you!) I called a psychologist. They told me that he was going to have to be tested and interviewed and then they could make a diagnosis one way or another. They would test for a whole battery of things, and not solely just ADHD. Which, I didn’t mind. We couldn’t get him in until the first week in December. We got in, got his testing done. And had to wait EIGHT weeks for the results (FOUR weeks longer than they promised me. And only got them at 8 weeks because John went up there himself and told them he wasn’t leaving without them). With results in hand, I then had to call his doctor again to make an appointment, so that HE could be the one to write the prescription. But, it’s the middle of flu season at the end of January, so we have to wait until his already made appointment for his check up a few days after his birthday. So we wait ANOTHER month.
The month comes and goes, and we tried Spark for school to help him concentrate until we got into the doctor. It helped some, but only lasted until about lunch. After lunch he was still struggling. We did melatonin at night to help him sleep, which DID and DOES still help him so much-highly recommend. And the day finally came that we got back into the doctor. I could tell he didn’t really want to start him on medicine, but I was beyond ready and we had tried a lot of other avenues (diet, schedule, etc) and were beyond ready to try medication to see if it helped.
So, we started medication on Tuesday.
And I sit here on Thursday, and I cannot even make it through typing this without huge crocodile tears at how happy I am. The first day of his medication, it was like a light bulb was turned on inside of him. He was my happy boy that I hadn’t seen in a very long time. He had a great day at school, and his teachers were shocked in the difference in not only his behavior, but just his overall demeanor. I got positive reviews two days in a row. He came home in a good mood, he played outside, he didn’t argue, he didn’t fuss, he was the happy and easy going kid that I knew had been in there. He scored SO high on both of his mock tests in Math and Reading. And the biggest thing, is that I haven’t heart him complain in three days. That is so huge in our house. SO. FREAKING. HUGE.
So, I know that medication is not the answer for everyone, and every kid. But I wrote this blog to tell people to please be an advocate for your kids. When your Momma Spidey Senses are tingling and something doesn’t feel right, often times, it’s not. When you aren’t satisfied with the answers that you get, do your own research and work WITH your doctors to come to a solution. You know your kids better than anyone. I am not sure where we would be had I not pushed for Beckett. But, even though the medications are new, and we will probably at some point have to adjust, or make changes, for the first time in a VERY long time, I am optimistic. And to me, that is literally everything. <3
