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I have just got to move!!
ADHD is diagnosed around three broad areas and one or three of these have to of been around , in the child's life before the age of 7. In a child this is a fairly easy thing to detect but in an adult not. Partly because an adult has left his or her childhood way behind. Adults who are diagnosed ADHD use quite a different set of qwuestions to that of a child but I gues it is safe to say that most adults will recognise the struggles from their own childhoods.
The three areas are :
Hyperactivity
Inattention
Impulsively
One or three need to be present.
The old way of dividing ADD and ADHD is no longer used by professionals and they simply put all under the banner of ADHD and then describe what that means.
Our eldest son was not obviously hyperactive. By this I mean , as a toddler, he did not climb up everything and jump off everything. He did not rush around as if he had been wound up like a toy. But I have come across a term that does describe the kind of motion hyperactivity he experience and that is a kind of restlessness. Yes! Bingo! He has a restlessness. A difficulty in settling and finding his central calm spot. he is usually always on the move in some way or another and in fact we are blessed to go to a school where there is so much sport on offer. He gets frighteningly grumpy when he has not had an opportunity to move. He has loved, tennis, squash, hockey and cross country. Move , move , move his limbs and brain cry out. and he does!!
One of the strange things I have noticed is this, as our son gets older, his ADHD becomes more obvious and more clear. The real struggles become more pronounced. Someone onces said to me, ' does it not get better as they get older." My experience is no. The more life throws at these kids, the more they have to manage and organise and get done, the more tricky it all becomes. The more of life = the more obvious the ADHD. Well, this has been our experience.
Our younger little man displays the kind of hyperactivity where he just can not sit still for any length of time. He wriggles and jiggles; he rolls and glides, he slides and shifts from here to there. He is like a jelly, slipping off the plate, onto the floor. Ha Ha!! what a laugh.
He is also on the move but in a different way. His chair is like a movement apparatus and is used to be next to, half on and half. Up until recently , his teacher seemed not to see this sort of restlessness in class but now that he has become more comfortable with her, bam, off her goes. Mr Wriggle - we welcome you!
Being so ' on the move' makes passive learning a real challenge for the ADHD kid. Often we have to think of exciting and new ways to read or learn words. This is a great challenge for me. I am a working mom and a home mom too. I juggle many balls and so really need to be creative in finding new ways to present the same old work.
Embracing the wriggler has been far healthier than trying to get him to sit still. he will slide off his chair at meal times ; he will fidget and flick about at homework times . His body and mind are on the move. I just can not be angry or enforce sitting still and we rather just try and encourage and remind so we can get through a meal with fun conversation and a good time rather than rules around sitting. Being an ADHD family definitely stretches and moulds in very different ways.
So, with our older son, sport rules and helps and with our younger, well, we are still in the experimental process. :)
Recently we had two assesments done with him. One was and ED Psych and the other a Speech and Hearing therapist. In both of these, with one on one attention, he just could not stay still, at all. Yikes! I love these times because they really shine out the true child. The one who might hide at school and the one often not seen. The way God made him is beautiful yet quirky. May God grant us grace and exact wisdom to help him grow into the man destined by Jesus!
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