ADHD Awareness Month

As it’s ADHD awareness month, I wanted to share something a little more personal.

My son has ADHD and he gave me permission to write this in the hope that it would help others.

He has always been the smartest, kindest person I know. He’s a social butterfly and chats a lot with anybody. 

He struggles to focus for long periods of time unless he is completely engrossed in something he loves. As he could never sit still long enough to do his homework, his teachers labelled him smart but lazy. When we tried to discuss these issues with school, we were always told ‘that’s boys for you’!

He passed his GSCEs with flying colours, pretty much without revising for them as he always said he didn’t know how to revise, but things got worse when he went to college to do his A levels. We thought he would love the freedom and the chance to study what interested him, but the loss of structure had the opposite effect.

He started having melt downs and panic attacks. 

We struggled for a long time to get him to the doctors as he refused and would get very upset.

When he eventually agreed to go, the doctor said ‘Yeah we all feel a bit like that, you’ll be fine’ 

A few months later we went back to a different doctor. She said, ‘you have a choice of meds and each one has awful side effects, so which one would you like?’

The third one prescribed him an anti-depressant that would help lift him out of his by now deep depression, long enough for him to agree to get therapy.

She saved us!

Not long after that, good friends of ours told us the story of their son who went through the same thing and had eventually been diagnosed with ADHD. All his symptoms and experiences mirrored my son’s. 

I called our doctors and asked for a referral. This came through very quickly at a local clinic. The physician we had asked a series of questions and said that without a doubt my son had ADHD. She couldn’t do anything to help us though as she had to refer him to a consultant and there was a 3 year waiting list. They couldn’t offer us any support at all without the official diagnosis!

By this time, my son had changed a few of his A levels to see if that helped but was again struggling to keep up with the workload.

After many visits to his college to discuss his situation, they pretty much said they couldn’t help him and he dropped out.

We knew we couldn’t wait 3 years for an official diagnosis and some support, so we decided to go privately.

I will never forget the look on my son’s face when we left that appointment. It was like a weight had been lifted. 

The appointment was difficult, as the questions the consultant asked brought out every thought and experience he had ever been through. It was heartbreaking to listen to exactly how it affected his life. He said he’d always thought he wasn’t normal.

He now has coping mechanisms in place to help him manage and takes medication, but this isn’t a cure. There is no cure.

He still finds it difficult to follow instructions sometimes as he has 100 other thoughts and ideas running through his brain at the same time and he still can’t sit and focus for long on something that doesn’t completely enthral him. 

However, he is the most amazing person I know and I wouldn’t change him for the world. He says his condition makes him who he is and everyone who knows him loves who he is.

What I would change, is a better understanding of the variations of the condition, so that we could have got him a diagnosis when he was much younger.

I would like to thank our friends who shared their story with us and allowed us to finally get help.

If you have any concerns about your child or other family members, then please don’t be fobbed off. Seek specialist help as soon as possible, as my son would have benefitted enormously from an earlier diagnosis.

Finally, please don’t judge others, as some disabilities are invisible.