Kids on a diet!

My 10-year old did not touch her favorite chilly chicken. When I asked her, the reply was “I am dieting”. My jaws dropped. My husband was equally stunned. For us she is still a little kid, and she is not over weight, her weight is perfect for us, she just looks healthy. However, she thinks she has a tummy to get rid of. I tried my best to take her out of this. I said, “Look, if you diet, you’ll not grow well”, a little dose of fear isn’t that bad either. I said, “See, you’ll not grow up to be a tall girl, your growth will be stunted and your skin will become so bad, your hair will not be silky, you’ll no longer be a pretty girl if you start dieting.

She agreed to eat “next time”. She happily said her brother had told her that she had actually looked thinner after recovering from fever. Her 13 year old brother thinks at a different level. He flexed his muscles and said, “Look I don’t have fat, my muscles are looking good”. He examines his muscles to see if he is going to look like some Hollywood or Bollywood hero with rippling muscles. He wants to get rid of even the smallest amount of fat on his tummy. He showed me the video of a small kid with muscles and said, “Even small kids can develop muscles”. I don’t agree, I said, “This is not the right time to build muscles. Teenagers just need to be healthy and grow well, if you try to lose fat, you’ll not attain your maximum height.” He sure wants to be tall. So he might think about eating well.

I and their father are the only people who seem to want to eat. We are not growing anymore except sideways, but we still eat. I eat each meal as though it is my last meal. Well, kids have a say in that too. My son said to me, “Actually, I think if you lose some more weight, you’ll look younger”. I look at the chilly chicken on my plate and at my husband. My husband assured me, “I don’t care if you are fat, eat well”. How sweet, I thought, but not for long! After a pause he said, “He’s right, you’ll look really younger if you lose some weight!” I will start dieting from tomorrow :-). I am not ready to join the gang yet!

The neglected sibling of a child with ADHD

My daughter was born when my son was three years old. As a newborn she needed a lot of attention and was always in my arms. My son would stand away from me and look at me with confused eyes filled with tears. He didn’t know why he was sad. He refused to talk to me. He was upset. His sad eyes always haunted me and I would handover the baby to my mother or someone else and go to him.

When he started going to school, his teachers would call me to school to say that he was a naughty kid. They said it was perhaps he was getting less attention because of his baby sister. It was not true! They said, the baby would not understand if I spent more time with my son, but he would understand. So, they said, ignore the baby. I was trying to do the balancing job. I soon realized that he needed more attention to finish his homework. When he was in class 4, it was clear that there was a problem. He was diagnosed with ADHD.

When I get back home after work, I would immediately go to my son and help him with his work. He needed all my time and his sister had to content with her grandmother teaching her. Then she started protesting and she became cranky. I realized that she was missing me very much. She was often neglected and we simply hoped she would understand that we need more time with him.

One day while I was teaching my son, she made several attempts to come near me. I asked her to go away because she would distract her brother. Later, when I was free, she came and asked me hopefully, “Can I sit on your lap for a little while?” I was simply shocked. You would not expect a small child of her age to ask her mother’s permission to sit on her lap. This really opened my eyes. Then I started teaching both of them. It is really hard, but she seems happier now. But I must admit that even now my son always gets the lion’s share of our attention.

I am sure parents of all kids with ADHD would experience this. Even without ADHD, sibling rivalry always exists, ADHD only complicates matter further.

The unseen casualty of ADHD

ADD/ADHD is not new to me. After my son was diagnosed, I realized that my brother might have had ADD when he was younger. The only difference in symptoms was that he was not hyperactive. He found it hard to study, how ever he tried. Everyone branded him as a lazy boy.

I think my father suffered the most due to this. He was a teacher in a well known public school. In a middle class family in India, a child’s education matters the most. My father worried about his son’s future. He was confused and couldn’t figure out why his son couldn’t study. Most of the other teachers had their children studying in professional colleges or well known institutes. He perhaps felt left out.

Through my brother’s high school years, I could see a change in my father. He worried a lot and his eyes always wore a sad look. His loud laughter and booming voice was heard less. He simply went into a shell. It affected all of us. When he died of a major heart attack at the age of 50, he was a lot different from the happy person I knew. I am not linking the heart attack to this, but it made him really sad. My brother outgrew his disorder and is doing well now.

Those days no one in India perhaps knew about ADHD/ADD or other learning disorders. Now when I see my husband becoming stressed about our son, I feel I have been through this for a long period, but he is new to ADHD. The feeling is so familiar to me. But our situation is better. We are not blindly fighting an unknown enemy. I always feel I am in control. I have taken up complete responsibility of teaching him and his younger sister. Perhaps somewhere in my mind, I am trying to protect my husband from the stress my father suffered!

Teaching a child with ADHD

My son has just finished his unit tests. I must say I am so relieved that he has scored more than 90% in Maths. But in other subjects his marks are pretty average. But then I didn’t teach him that well. I allowed him to learn on his own. So he’s got between 40%-50% in all papers. But then I feel confident that he would get good marks if I sit with him.

We enjoyed the last two weekends because his unit tests were over. Now the next one is around the corner. So, no more outings for us for the next two weekends. But my son is no longer going for tuitions in the evening. He gets to play every day. Everyone at home including my husband and his parents were against discontinuing his tuitions. They say I cannot manage his studies and that of his sister’s all by myself. But I really want to make this work.

It’s not at all easy. For example, today I reached home by 6.45 pm from office. My son iwatching TV after playing with his friends. Then he takes his own time to drink his milk and eat some snacks. I don’t know how many times I would have called out to him to get his books for studies. He is tinkering with something and then he starts looking for his books. He opens his book at 8.00 pm, finally! He simply stares with his book open. I have to keep reminding him to read. Every instruction should be repeated again and again. He takes four steps forward and takes two steps backward. But then he is still moving forward. If he manages to study two pages today, it’s not a bad day after all!

Parents and stress caused by ADHD

When you have a pre-teen with ADHD, stress is inevitable. In my case, I spend most of my time at home with kids, especially with my pre-teen with ADHD. He needs that extra attention to complete his homework and his studies. This means I have less time for other chores, which get postponed. It also means I have less time to relax and do things I would love to do.

Very often I don’t feel relaxed after a weekend, when I get back to office because I have been trying to revise my son’s lessons, without which he wouldn’t be able to manage. My husband helps me with most of the other chores. We also find that we have less time for each other. Even for those weekend outings, we always think twice, because it might affect my son’s schedule.

Tension brewing in this kind of a situation is common. There are lots of arguments and those fights, which actually have no basis but stress. May be we don’t link all this to ADHD, but I am sure it is.

My pre-teen is over anxious about thieves

My 13-year old is on ADHD medication. Now he has a strange, problem, which I don’t think is related to ADHD or medication. He starts getting tensed by nightfall. The reason, he fears sleeping alone. We somehow pacify him or stay in his room until he falls aleep and then retire to our room. By then we become really tired. Then by midnight he is knocking at our door. However we try to pacify him, he insists on sleeping in our room.

One night, he woke me up and silently signaled to me that there was someone under our bed. I said, no, no one’s there. But he wouldn’t believe. Very reluctantly he looked under the bed. Seeing the fear on his face, I almost expected someone to be there. Then he frantically started opening our wardrobes to check for someone hiding in there, right in the middle of the night. Finally he fell asleep. But then he insisted on sleeping near my husband and held on to him until he fell asleep.

I can’t describe the thoughts that crossed my mind. I was really shaken. I have heard about various disorders that could accompany ADHD. But, his psychiatrist ruled it out. He said, the child would grow out of it. He has had similar fears in the past too and he recovered from that. May be he is a bit too sensitive. I hope he gets over this sooner.

Psychiatrist and your child with ADHD

We paid yet another visit to the psychiatrist before the school reopened. He prescribed Atomoxetine Hydrochloride 18, twice a day. He said it is perfect for his weight (40kg). So far he has been taking only half the dose daily.

I somehow get this feeling that he doesn't understand the human side of ADHD. For him my son is just a kid who needs to take medication. I wonder if all psychiatrists are like this. He said if the kid didn't do well it must be because of low intelligence. I really had to control myself. Perhaps he didn't remember that we had shown him the results of the intelligence test and it was way above normal. The psychiatrist mentioned to me that in spite of being able to concentrate he has scored so well. He said that his actual scores would be higher. And this is not something a psychiatrist should say after treating a child for three years.

It is one week since the school reopened. I am monitoring him carefully for his progress and also growth and any changes in him. He still spends one hour almost everyday searching for his pens or books. He still finds it difficult. His class teacher had said that he has become a laughing stock in the class because when all kids in the class are writing, he would still be searching frantically for his things. I wonder if other kids with ADHD also experience similar difficulties.