Does anyone know of anything natural for ADD? My daughter has ADD and she is almost 14. We've been the medical route. The psyciatrist had her on Trileptal and Wellbuffrin, then he added something else. I thought I was gonna loose her being on so many meds. Took her to a doc and got her off. She's been on nothing for about a year now and her grades are bad. I won't try to drug route again or another doc of any type!

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unfortunetly I don't have any answers for you, I can only tell you what we have tried and dismissed.

My son has been on ritalin, then adderall, then adderall XR, and after a very bad repsonse to the XR we pulled the plug on the meds. Since then, we have put him on Gingko biloba (we try to get in 3-4 a day), and Omega-3 fish oil(1000 mg./day). Also we just had his vivion tested w/a behavioral optometrist. He was found to have an eye disorder (convergence excess) that may have been ALOT of the problem all along. He starts his treatments (therapy) tomorrow.

I, like you will not go the meds route any more. I am not against them if it works for a child. But we never had success. We never had good grades, we never seen his self esteem go up. It was always the opposite. He is back to the child I knew a long time ago. We have out moments, but we are trying to cope in different ways. I MAKE him write everything down!!

I don't know your answer...I have learned so much form this site, these wonderful people on here, and Have done a tremendous amount of research for anything that might help. I wish you good luck...what a terrible place to be in for your daughter, and it is so tough watching them go thru so much and feeling so lost as how best to help them. I feel alot has to do with hormones also. Sure changes a lot of things. My son's ADD is actually better than ever before since we are in the middle of puberty. Again, life is not bliss, we have our times, but I would rather have these times than the zombie, sickly, weak, crying, child he was.

Keep looking for an answer. Try an ND. I have heard some good things about them, but carefully check their license and ALWAYS check to make sure you know the side effects of any "natural" help.

Hope some of this helps?? Good Luck http://www.healthboards.com/ubb/smile.gif

Susan

ShaBaby59-
This is the first time i have responded on this board. Your post definitely caught my interest. I have a daughter that was formally diagnosed with ADD (the inattentive type) this year by her primary physician, the school psy, and a series of reviews from teachers and of course us, her mom and dad. It has been a difficult haul but I am glad we now have something to work with. By reading many many posts and doing my own research online/books I began omega3 fishoils that seem to be helping ever so slightly. Recently, because of her struggling to keep up academically in her regular classroom, we transferred her to an "innercore" class where she has the same teacher for all 4 core classes. The class also has only 20 students. What caught my eye on your post is the fact that you took your daughter off meds (something i have not tried yet) and her bad grades. My daughters grades are progressively getting worse. Actually, they are terrible at this point. The switch to innercore actually has not shown any form of improvement for her. I am scheduling a meeting with her teacher, but im beside myself on what to do. I literally have to disect her homework each and every night, and continue to dig-dig-dig for missing work, F grades on work not turned or F grades from tests/quizzes. I dont know what to do at this point. She is so unorganized but such a sweet sweet girl. When ever i ask her about what happened, its as if i am repromanding her (her head hangs low and she has that look on her face of failure). I have to defend myself to say that I am very very careful with my choice of words and tone. I try to remain positive, compassionate and do my best to be her #1 fan and support. Throughout this discovery of her diagnosis I (and my husband) are working in the mode of being supportive and trying to allow time to let her be a kid - not always grinding away at the books. Its not fair that she is in all the afterschool tutoring, no electives - she is in a study group. She has to have time to unload. Anyhow, to make a long story short, I am frustrated. I feel as if the school system is brushing her under the mat because she is so quiet,,,and I am not satisfied with the fact that they (the school psy & counselor) recommend her to innercore but forget about her progress thereafter. As a matter of fact, they did not even discuss her history with the new teacher at all. Any advice? I do wish you the best with your daughter. It is so difficult to see them fall behind and you almost feel exhausted as to what to do.
Thanks for listening.

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zocker

Hi there all,
All of our children are different, but let me share about one of mine, who was totally different than the other two. We don't have scripts to follow, and everything changes daily, so life is very hard for parents, and imagine what it is like for kids! It is like we all need a PhD in psychology for Pete's sake!

Parents make many mistakes. I know looking back, that these will be just words to young parents as they were to me, but don't sweat the small stuff OR the big stuff. An elderly lady and her husband told me this, when they saw how anxious I was with my kids. I asked them how they could be so serene, and they told me that they felt just like me when they were younger. But, over time, they learned that what we sweat over the most is not important in the overall scheme of life. That we don't even know if we have a tomorrow or if our kids do, so we may as well relax right now!

The main thing I found as I began to practice their advice is that when I am relaxed inside, I handle everything much better, and can see solutions that were right before my face all along, but that had been blocked out by my own anxiety. We know inside ourselves what we really need to do. But it isn't fast or convenient or someoen else disagrees, so we tend to ignore our inner voice and listen too much to the clamour outside our heads. Or have too much of the outside clamour right inside of our own heads!

I have a grown child, 20 now, but he still has the same tendencies, who bows his head and goes into himself when confronted with what he has been doing incorrectly. He tends to depression, self-absorption, and self-pity. He is otherwise an intelligent, wonderful, sensitive and caring person.

As a parent, my personality is direct, open and somewhat impatient. Despite my son's compliant appearance, he is stubborn and passive-agressive, meaning that any rebellion he has is internalized and robs him of energy to get tasks completed. He will space out and be silent before he will fight for what he wants openly. This makes it impossible to get any
feedback out of him, or to deal with him. It can feel maddening!

I didn't see any of this about him until I home-schooled him during the 8-11th grades, and then I really learned a LOT. This child wanted complete structure and no surprises. If I got disorganized at all, or behind in my schedule, he shut down. When he shut down, I applied pressure, correcting him, urging him to do his work, etc. Not in a mean way, but to notify him that he had to get caught up. It became a vicious circle of his shutting down and me being overly involved in the school work that was his personal responsibility.

Eventually, I took cue from experience with my first child, who was more open, and had told me, many times, to allow him to make his own mistakes. It was very hard, but I backed off from this last son, and made up some consequences that he would not like, and put his responsibility back on him. It was not easy to find consequences, because he didn't have friends he wanted to be with, or activities he wanted to participate in.
All he wanted to do was play Nintendo, watch TV, or use his computer (which he was VERY good at). I had tried taking those things away from him, and he didn't care. He would just sleep.

Well, I had determined this was a battle of wills, though he did not admit it. I began making him sit on his bed (not allowed to lie down) to think when he was unresponsive, or down-cast. I didn't do it punitively, but told him that people have to communicate, and if they don't they damage relationships, and that he was damaging ours by not talking. I told him he has to sit there until he is willing to talk. It took a few hours for him to respond, at the first several times I did this. Then he would come out of his room, and we would have the necessary communications. If he hung his head, I told him not to try to make it appear I was abusing him, and if he didn't look up, he was sent back to his room to sit and think.

It took awhile for this to change, because he is a manipulator, not an open direct person. I have had long talks with him about how his traits, like all of us, can be used positively or negatively. He can be himself and not be negative, just as he can be himself and not be positive. If he wants to act like a weak person, he can choose to go into himself when he does things wrong and feel sorry for himself that someone noticed he did it wrong, or he can look others in the eye, and say yes, I did "this" wrong but I will work on it, or this is what I will do to fix it.

He lives at home and has, in spite of his great intelligence, failed and dropped out of college classes. This is a young man that tested at 11th grade to be at second year college level in learning. The public school didnt even want him back, as they had nothing to offer him, so he began college.

It has been very hard to do, but my husband, his father, and I made a rule that if he doesn't choose to do the work of college, he has to pay his full share of living costs, his car can't be on our insurance, etc. He can live here, but as a fully participating adult, like a room mate. And he won't get another chance to have support while he attends college. Then we left the choice to do the work up to him.

He chose to do the work of catching up in his classes, and my husband noted how he looked like a weight was off him, the next morning. I did tell him that if he needed to make himself accountable he could leave a list of due homework on the table where we could see it, if that would help him stay on task. He didn't say yet, if he wants that.

I suggest that you back off and give responsibility back to your child for his or her own grades. The child has to do nothing when you are the one poring over everything, and is not excelling or learning. The child has become inert mass, doing nothing, while you do all the worrying and fixing and all.

I don't have time to go into it right now, but this morning as I was looking at possible college psychology classes for myself, I noticed that the Conner's Parent Rating Scale is a criteria for ADD/ADHD testing. It rates parenting problems.

I suggest that these parenting problems are between
child and parent personalities, and if you can understand your child's personality and not feel guilty or be anxious, that you can figure out how to best manage your child productively. I believe the resources are inside of you and that you are the best parents your children can have! Gos bless you!

(gos??? that was some typo! I mean GOD bless!)


[This message has been edited by mickimac (edited 03-26-2003).]

Zocker,

You know, this is my 2nd daughter with academic problems and I know where you are coming from cause I'm there again! My first daughter, now almost 23, had the same sort of problems and ADD too. She had been on Ritlin when she was little, stomach pains, head aches, etc. and it seems those pains and aches never went away and I blame it on the Ritlin. Though she also had Hep B from when we were stationed in Turkey. And my 2nd daughter isn't a military brate, just the first. Anyway, my first daughter finally dropped out in 9th grade and lived with a boyfriend until they married a couple years ago. She just recently got her GED and got a job for the county and now her she got her husband a job there too. All that frustration all those years and she grew out of it all/the ADD. But I'll tell you, she had got involved in real bad stuff around 7th grade and older but now it's all behind her. So my 2nd daughter, it's frustrating to wonder what went wrong with her. I left her dad right before she was in Kindergarten. I homeschooled her in preschool and she knew everything, plus, what a Kindergartener knew, then I left her dad and her grades slowly fell until 5th grade and then she had straight F's. She also had her step-mother for her teacher and principal in 5th. Her step mother was the prinicpal from like 2nd grade through 5th and I got custody of her. Her dad would do horrible stuff to her and making her stay up till after midnight working on homework. I got custody of her that year. She was doing great in 5th grade but her teacher over here suggested that she was pretty immature and said maybe I ought to keep her back. Sam did alot of homeschooling over the Summer and even Summer School and then I let her go to 6th grade. Then 6th grade was very rocky, she wasn't ready for it still. She couldn't keep up with the work and wasn't motivated, couldn't keep her mind on it, etc. Then they passed her on to 7th and that Summer, she went to so many week long camps cause I felt she needed a brake so we didn't do Summer School or homeschool. 7th grade has been an entire disaster. She is back to straight F's almost. Band she gets a B and Science D's and C's. The others, pretty bad. The school won't test her again because last year they tested her and she fell within limits. They noticed she did show memory problems and what not but decided to do nothing but the 504 program which did nothing but monitor and check for homework which I could do myself! So I said screw that. That was in 6th grade but this year in 7th, they won't test her, they say I have to wait 2 more years because the law says they only have to test her every 3 years. When I threatened to have her tested on the outside at my own expense, they got scared and said they'd help her and they have been helping her but it seems as though they are giving her the answers! And it's too much homework still, they won't cut it down! I know if I could get an IEP, which I can't until 2 yrs go down but the IEP would offer less work than other students by law. The state I am in is worthless but you may try for an IEP. Some states require you to get a diag of ADD and a referral for an IEP which we did but that didn't make the school do anything. We are going to move very soon to where they will do something. I'm tired of fighting the system. I can't afford testing right now. And we are so far from the big city. The big city's have SO MUCH more to offer! The only problem is, we had lived in the big city with my first daughter and she wound up w/bad kids. So, when we move there, I will have to get my 2nd daughter involved in things to keep her buzy outside of school. I keep thinking, 4 1/2 yrs till she's 18 and hopefully she'll outgrow her ADD. Counseling didn't seem to help. Some of the stuff that bothers me too about Sam is she's so immature compared to my first daughter. Not even my 6 yr old son does things like Sam. She puts her snot all along the side of the sink when she uses the bathroom. She throws tantrums like a new born baby. I can't stand it so I open her window hoping she won't scream. I guess everyone handles things differently but I'm beside myself. Her dad wants her back there but whenever she had asked him to come to her event, he asks what's in it for him, what she would do for him. I told him if he's gonna act that way than Sam won't call him until he acts like a father should. She won't speak to him anymore actually. Anyway, I think she got behind years ago in her work and just hasn't caught up. She doesn't know her multiplication and she's doing a little pre-algebra at school. I whish the schools would realize all kids aren't at the same level. I wish you luck. Let me know what you look to do. My oldest son, now in 5th, at his dad's is having the same problems. His dad makes him stay up till after midnight most nights, doing work that he isn't ready for. He feels if he keeps pushing him that he'll do great in school and I'll have no basis to get custody of him but he wants to live with me. I've called child protective service alot in the past but it only makes me look bad for calling wolf. His wife is a friend of cps, and his wife has relatives in the sheriff's dept, my attorney use to work for cps and was the county attorney, finally i quite paying her after paying $30,000.00 and still I only have temp custody of my daughter for 2 yrs. I could go on for days so I'd better close.

I have had great luck with the Omega 3 fatty acids (fish oil). I have been able to reduce my meds (dexedrine) by 50% with fish oil. Now with fish oil it doesn't happen over night. to get the full benifit I was on it a year. I did see improvement in 3 weeks.
Give it a long try, it might help. Also make sure you don't buy the real cheep brands. Make sure what you buy has been filterd for heavy metals.

Mickimac's mention of long talks with her son's discussing his traits remind me of my lectures to my own son! It seems useless at the time, but it does eventually soak in! Relaxing about this whole parenting thing is a key point...we are responsible to a certain degree to teach our kids what's right and what to do, but ultimately they are individuals and will do what they want in the end. We are their guides in life, not their dictators. Being less controlling even avoided some of the dreaded teenage rebellion I had heard of....my kids and I had some ups and downs, but that period went by fairly smooth compared to some other horror stories I had heard of!
I especially noticed that Mickmac's son managed to still forge ahead in life, despite school problems. Yes, it can be done! And without medications!

It's ok to expect certain things when it comes to school, but ShaBaby's ex-husband is pushing way too hard! He doesn't sound like a caring, supportive dad, and sometimes this really causes bad behaviors in children. Not to mention it has to hurt inside. He may regret it someday.

Actually Zocker,

My youngest son, 6, I'm now homeschooling because of the way schools are. I don't worry about the social thing and I'm tired of hearing about it. He's so full of love, life, vibrant, not a worry in the world he thinks and he's so easy to get along with. The public schools are catching on that their schools don't provide as good as an education as they can provide so they go around trying to scare people into sending their kid's to school. We can go as slow or as fast as he wants and I don't have to worry about him not keeping up because I go at his pace. It's not for everyone I realize though.

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People don't always outgrow ADD. I know I didn't. I'm 47 years old.
Whether medicines are considered "Natural" or "synthetic" has no bearing as to their efficacy. You should pursue what works and is safest.

There is also the possibility of Aspergers Syndrome, which is what my son was diagnosed with. It is similar to ADD, but more profound with additional issues.

You could have ADD as an adult and it might be contributory to the negative life experiences you've reported in your posts.

Any relatively safe medication that helps is not bad. Ritalin helped me and my son significantly. We now use Concerta and think it is great because it eliminated the dosage issues associated with Ritalin. It helps significantly with our ADD issues. Observers can tell a real difference, the person who is taking the medication might not notice any difference.

I told my son to take the medication if he was going to drive. He didn't follow my admonition. After which he had two wrecks in two weeks time. Needless to say he will not drive without having taken his medication until he is independent. He thought he was driving just fine, however, I couldn't stand to be in the car with him as driver unless he'd taken his medication.

Remember, it is critical to have the right dosage, as not enough, too much or inconsistent absorption can cause problems. That's why I now take Concerta, it's much more predictable.

You might see if you are ADD and then treat that issue accordingly. Which might help you straighten out the other issues. I was amazed at my ability to continue on task and accomplish things once properly medicated.

Inquizitive,

I am ADD myself and I tried Ritlin, I couldn't take it. As for the time released, I could and it helped but I didn't have a perscription for that one.



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Inquizitive,

You are right, I didn't outgrow the ADD. I wasn't suggesting that all people outgrow it. One of mine did but I didn't. Therefore, my other daughter may not outgrow it.

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Jennita,
I agree all the way, he's too hard on my 11 yr old and he's driving him away. He did it to my two older ones. He's even abusive but like I explained in one of my past posts, I've tried alot and got NO where. That's the problem with these small towns.

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ShaBaby59~
You and your children have been through a lot of crapola...kids may seem really resiliant, but these issues usually get internalized, and kids ALWAYS think it has to do with them being worthless, and they blame themselves.
I hope that you will reinforce that none of these circumstances are their fault, and try to get them and yourself some really good counseling or therapy

My problem with giving kids (or anyone) labels is that life experiences cause human responses, and we can learn new ways to think and new coping skills and change directions. But if we get a label it can never be removed, so that if we notice similar responses (which may be for very good but different reasons), we think we are still "sick".

It is totally normal to space out and be disconnected when suffering, and to be hyperactive when anxious. Divorce and separation, rejection, and all kinds of things produce these symptoms, and they are normal for the kind of stress it is.

ShaBabe59,

I read in one of your earlier posts that you had your daughter tested through the schools and they don't want to test again. I don't know if you have insurance or not, but it sounds to me that your daughter may be experiencing more than ADD/ADHD. I'm not a doctor, just a parent whose son was assumed to be ADHD by the school, but I felt there was more to it. I took him to a well respected neuropsychologist and had him tested (my insurance paid for it), and though he did test positive for ADHD he was also diagnosed with tourettes disorder and Asperger's syndrome. Granted at this point my son has a whole team of doctor's ranging from his pediatrician, psychologist, psychiatrist, and neurologist the care that my son is getting is very high quality and I also have a good relationship with the school and his teacher. I think your daughter is sending up a "red flag" and though I don't want to sound like I'm telling you what to do, I would try to get her in to see a counselor who works with kids, and then get some referrals from her for testing. The neuropsych testing covers so many areas from psychological difficulties to learning disorders and I can't recommend it enough. Your first step is to get to the bottom of all the trouble then plan your strategy from there. I hope this helps you. Good luck!

" my kid's grades are bad" is not a symptom of their illness.

Kids get bad grades when they are moved from place to place, lose parents, get unduly pressured by parents, etc.

They do not need "tested" as much as they need some consideration for the chaos that has been brought into their lives, no fault of their own. It messes them up big time. It is not their flaw that they then get bad grades. Their self-esteem is smashed when parents separate. That is the way it is.

Now how to mend that? Encourage them to admit how angry they are, and teach them how to express it in healthy ways. Admit to them that we the parents did this, not them, and it isn't their fault. Then they can mend and change directions and not continue to be self-destructive.

ShaBaby59,

The best supplemental treatment by far, is mega-dose high quality fish oil, along with combo's of essential neurotransmitter amino acids; such as, L-tyrosine and DL-phenylalanine and GABA in some situations. One problem in consuming an amino-acid multi vit is 'they' all compete to cross the blood-brain barrier at once and sometimes the essential ones do not succeed. Meaning, it's better to supplement each individually.

Also look into biofeedback to permanently 'fix' some of the increased symptoms when one tries to increase their concentration. Also reffered to slangly as "frontal-lobe shutdown".

Mega-doses mean 6-8 grams typically and are usually divided in even doses throughout the day. You really shouldn't give up on physicians because of one ignorant and/or idiot psychiatrist. There are many out there who truly want to help (within their scope of practice) and along with supplemental treatment it could improve if not change your's and your child's life 180 degrees for the positive.

[This message has been edited by help (edited 03-26-2003).]