Okay, so I know it’s been several days. It’s been a bit busy and I haven’t been sure how to address certain things that are going on. It’s hard to explain when you’re a parent of a special needs child and you recognize that there are issues in your other children that are typical that need to be handled. I think I hate the term special needs.
It’s hard when you recognize things that may need to be diagnosed. You know that there’s something there and you want to get a handle on it, you know it’s real, but at the same time you’ve got this voice in the back of your mind telling you that you’re Diagnosis Happy and looking for a Quick Fix.
I can tell you that in reality, that’s simply not true. I don’t want to get into the whole debate of how Autism, ADD, ADHD, and other disorders are over-diagnosed “these days” because the fact is that people are more educated now and have access to information they didn’t have before. There are more specialists than there were before. More children and adults that would not have been diagnosed before are able to be diagnosed where before their problems and concerns would never have been addressed and they would have been labeled Problem Children, Stupid, Retarded, Difficult, and Impossible To Deal With. Are there kids and adults misdiagnosed? YES. I don’t deny that. But let’s move on.
I’ve documented my struggles with my eldest daughter over the years. With her transition-into-middle-school problems and renewed homework struggles this school year, I’ve had to think and read back on her past behaviors in school, homework, and home whenever she’s started school, changed teachers, changed grade levels, changed schools, and had other big changes like birthdays and anything else “big.” She ends up in this same pattern but this has been the worst regression in a long time. But the pattern is definitely there. How I could have missed it all these years when I have a child on the Autism spectrum, I don’t know, but there’s a pattern of attitude and behavior that closely coincides with ADHD. That inability to focus and stay focused is huge. She gets a bit spacey. She’s so disorganized it’s ridiculous even when there are safeguards in place. It drives me nuts because it’s so opposite of who I am. I don’t understand how she didn’t inherit my organizational gene. I can be untidy, but I organize like no one’s business.
I have no worries that she’s on the Autism Spectrum. I’m not as certain that she’s ODD (Oppositionally Defiant) because as the school psychologist said, many children that are extremely intelligent and are also ADHD can be so intelligent that they’re difficult to parent. They think they know better, they don’t like rules and want to be considered equal to adults early on. It resembles ODD behavior except there’s no violence and there are authority figures that she respects. She may still think she’s equal to all authority, but she respects the authority. ODD doesn’t have that respect. And she’s not violent.
Anyway, at that last parent-teacher conference I requested a behavior plan and a 504 request. We had the 504 meeting last week during which I formally requested an evaluation for ADHD, emotional issues (due to family and school stresses over the past year), and an IQ test. They’re going to test for whatever they can think of. I just have to get the form in this afternoon, actually. Then they can get her services geared to help her, I can get the independent evaluation for a formal diagnosis if she needs one as well as anything else she may need to help her focus which would also force the issue with the school in case their evaluation doesn’t match up with the independent one… and we’ll have a name for what’s going on.
I’ve always thought that this was just how she was. She’s my first child and therefore my baseline for how children are. ADHD was never even on my radar for her until a month ago when I started to look back at her patterns. And although you’re not supposed to do this, but I realized that when I compared her behaviors to my youngest daughter, I saw that it’s just not normal to be that frustrated if she didn’t have something “going on.” I just thought, “Hey, this is her personality. She’s just high maintenance and really intelligent.” It’s more than that and it’s frustrating to her at least as much as it is to me and The Mister.
Something I didn’t know until the 504 meeting was that during the past month while I was getting my research done and starting to get my feelers out with her teachers was that my daughter has been thinking about this ::waves arms around ADHD:: for a long time. She’s been looking up what it’s all about. She recognized herself in it. She even went to the school psychologist on her own before I did to request that she be evaluated for ADHD. When my daughter came to me, nervous and worried, to tell me that she thought she had ADHD she had already been to the school psychologist to mention her worry. She begged me to get her tested. She begged me to help her fix things. She’s worried and wants to fix this situation. It touched me so much, and I know that I have to help her.
So we’re on the road to getting her help. With a child as intelligent as she is, it shouldn’t be this difficult.
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