So, living happily here?!

So yes, I decided that living happily here is the way!! And ADHD is not a disease, but it certainly creates "interest," and our lives are anything but ordinary…

So here I am, a mother of three boys, two of whom have been diagnosed with ADHD, and the challenges… how to put it gently… are never boring!!

Between the "routine" tasks, the laundry, and the dishwasher, there are many emotional issues and many difficulties with a system that isn’t exactly built to support my "special" children. And in between, insights come, along with the realization that if I don’t fight for them, no one, absolutely no one, will do it…

It all started last year, shortly after I gave birth to Gai. We received a phone call from Noam’s teacher—he was in first grade at the time—who told us about behavioral problems, lack of cooperation, zoning out, frequent requests to go to the bathroom (6 times during a lesson…), lack of order and organization, and more… I admit that at first, just like the teacher, we thought the child was going through a "crisis" because of the new baby, and we acted accordingly. We had conversations, imposed sanctions, and got very angry… we got verrrrrrryyyyy angry.

And of course, it worked for a day or two, and then everything returned, along with new surprises: the child was drawing on the desk, cutting pencils, or, at best, sharpening them to death, losing supplies endlessly, not wanting to do homework, and when he finally sat down to do it, it felt like parting the Red Sea and the Exodus from Egypt combined…

Weeks of evening phone calls from the teacher and anger passed, and we decided on a "serious" punishment. My husband took action—he "cleared" Noam’s desk of all the art supplies, markers, paints, and more that filled it. And you won’t believe it—the empty desk worked wonders for the pace of homework completion… Instead of sitting for hours, the time spent on homework was cut in half…

That was our first lightbulb moment… The second lightbulb moment came when we received another phone call from the teacher: "My dear, we have a problem… the child isn’t doing it on purpose; he simply can’t control it…" I heard the teacher on the other end of the line and understood / didn’t really understand…

And two pieces of the puzzle started to connect into big question marks…

On one hand, my relationship with Noam had become angry, sad, and helpless. My heart broke with the realization that I had worsened his condition and his struggles by not trying to understand, and in fact, he didn’t know how to explain in words what was happening to him…

We decided to look into the matter more deeply and tried to schedule an appointment with a neurologist… haha… no appointments available for the next year…

So we went further after receiving a recommendation for the Adar Institute in Be’er Sheva, which works with the health fund. Even there, we waited about two months, but we finally got there in our time… :-)

Until the long-awaited meeting with the doctor and the diagnosis, we decided to back off and try to "fix," at least a little, what we had broken. We worked with Noam using a method of empowerment through behavior charts and positive reinforcement. Lots of motivational talks, hugs, and more…

In the meantime, we started reading—a lot—as much material as possible about ADHD because we realized that’s probably where this was heading… We listened to online lectures, read articles. We wanted to know: What is it? What’s it called? And yes… why did this happen to us? And how can we help our child be able to sit in class without feeling inferior, without being reprimanded every moment, and without suffering—because the more we delved into the subject, the more we understood how much he was suffering.

By the way, at this stage, we already realized that Matan, the middle child, probably also suffers from the same ADHD… but Matan was only 4 years old at the time…

In January 2011 (I think…), the long-awaited meeting finally arrived… Adar Institute—HERE WE COME…

And more about that in the next post…

Good night,

Ilana