Until I was a parent with a child diagnosed with ADHD who scored very high on “impulsivity,” I’d hear these statements about ADHD and think they made sense. There is a pervading rightness to all of these statements, if they just weren’t so wrong. And it is this humbled version of me (a far cry from she who used to think and believe all this stuff) that now wants to take a whack at telling you why the statements are all wrong. So the story always starts with “Once upon a time”, and in my case it continues “I thought that your child wouldn’t need drugs for ADHD if…”

Parenting Children with ADHD1) He’d just exercise. Yeah, right. My kid gets more exercise just getting up in the morning and jumping the five feet down from the top bunk of his bunk bed than most kids do before lunchtime. He has always been incredibly active… so much so that at the end of a very long day at daycare, one of his teachers asked my husband, “Do we wear him out at all for you?” to which he answered, “No, but thanks for trying!” At the age of three, he might spend nearly an entire summer day in the backyard with me, swimming (I mean swimming under water, on the water, jumping, diving, and so on) until he was cold, and then getting out and running around the backyard in sweats until he was warm enough to swim again. Rinse, repeat. He can ski all day and not want to stop. He can out walk, bike, and skate the grown-ups. He is now older and plays soccer at recess and likes to take laps around our block on roller skates or his bike for fun. Yes, more exercise does help his ADHD, but we haven’t reached the level of exercise yet that controls it. I read an interesting article titled “Riding is my Ritalin” (1) where the young man in question was able to stop taking Ritalin when he reached 25 hours of exercise per week. That’s a lot of exercise. If we were all still hunter-gatherers, my son would not only get that much exercise and more, but I bet he’d also be elected chief of the tribe. He’s fearless; in fact he loves danger and finds it easier to think the more exercise he gets. Mastodon, beware. But we are city dwellers now. (Can’t I just stay at the cave?)

2) If schools didn’t make students sit. My son would need a jungle gym, an obstacle course, and a death-defying thrill ride integrated with his classroom to have his ADHD work for him rather than against him with his school work. It isn’t particularly hard for him to sit, but if you make him sit he’ll never stop talking. Or popping his mouth, cracking knuckles, or making sound effects. He loves to make jokes and will blurt out anything that makes him laugh in the hopes that other people will laugh, too. The kid has a great sense of humor, but can be a real distraction in the classroom.

3) If you didn’t just want him to get better grades. Yes, he is getting better grades taking a stimulant. No surprise there. I do better when I’m full of coffee, too. But the behavior that made us look at drugs as a possibility had nothing to do with grades at school. His teachers have told us consistently that he is a smart kid, and he was getting mostly B’s or “at grade level” on his report card (and my husband and I were both OK with that kind of performance). The behavior that made me think “We have to do something NOW!” is that he is impulsive. His little brother was suffering as a result – the impulsive tap that was too hard, the impulsive words that were too hurtful, and the impulsive contact with no-touch areas on other people’s bodies – just as I had suffered with my own older brother and his (undiagnosed) ADHD, I was now watching my younger son suffer. A great quote that describes this is “Kids can be naturally impulsive, inattentive and overactive, but those with ADHD are more so, all the time.“

[1, emphasis mine] And you cannot effectively correct impulsive behavior. It is inherently uncontrollable as its name indicates – someone with ADHD has an impulse and they do it. The part of their brain that says, “I have been punished for that 37 times, and this time mom’s really gonna kill me” is asleep, and so they do it for the 38th time. Try to parent that without losing your mind. Try to parent that without help, because I assure you if my kid did any of this stuff to your kid, you would be insisting we did something to FIX IT.

4) No, really, you just want him to get better grades… I’m not at that point yet. But I know people who have been there. If your child was described by his teachers as smart and did well in school up through junior high and then started getting all Ds in high school, would you do something? What if Sylvan Learning Centers didn’t help either? What if your tutoring had no effect? Or grounding him, and every other thing you could think of? What if your poor kid cried about it? If you walked in those shoes, would you think a medication that let him do his homework at night in one hour instead of five hours was a good thing? We aren’t talking about getting an extra percentage point to make the Dean’s list or be valedictorian, we are talking about your child’s self-esteem, their ability to get into college at all, and their ability to learn. Really, please stop complaining about this one until you’ve had to parent it.

5) Didn’t feed him junk food. Yeah, that’s funny too. My child tried a soda for the first time at a party when he was 6. We eat organic, whole wheat, Earth-mother food and he is still bouncing off the walls. It may affect other kids and make them hyper, but I do not see the effect of sugary, salty, processed, or fatty foods on this one even when he does consume them.

6) If you would just make him behave. I believed this one for a long time myself when my only child was my firstborn, a daughter. Once I had my son with ADHD, I redefined the word “behave.” If he is simply a distraction and is not hurting anyone –running around being a danger to others, saying the latest curse word he heard on the playground, or making too much noise– then his behavior is acceptable. If he is trying and succeeding to make his brother laugh without too many potty words, then he’s golden. Flexibility has become the key to sanity for me. Put it another way, I can’t make him behave, and he can’t make himself behave either. I try to avoid putting him in situations where he can’t behave. I especially plan ahead for situations that are too boring, because being bored to someone with ADHD is like a power vacuum. Boring works for about 12.3 seconds until we have an implosion or an explosion of his style, humor and excitement. Providing constant distraction and keeping the mess to a minimum, that’s the best I can do.

7) If teachers were <fill in the blank>. Are there really people who believe that teachers want the children medicated, so they’ll sit in tidy little rows and do their work? Evidently, there are people who think that. The teachers I have met have bent over backwards to accommodate my son’s differences in the classroom, and none of them has ever once suggested he’d be fine if we medicated him. Truly, as far as I am concerned, his teachers walk on water. They have done an amazing job teaching him despite his constant distractions. For example, one called him her “sound effects kid.” She didn’t try to correct this behavior constantly, because she said that she figured a child’s personality was fairly well formed by third grade. She felt that her choices for children at that age were to work with or around personality quirks, reasoning that constantly disciplining him would just make both of them nuts. How can you not love her? His teachers have been fabulous; he learned in spite of his ADHD and they managed to teach a class full of kids with one of them bent on disruption. Please don’t bad-mouth the teachers.

8) If he weren’t your only child, you would know this is just what kids are like. I have two other children, neither of whom is even close to having ADHD. One is grown and I’d like to think I did a pretty good job raising her, but she’s the kind who practically raised herself. And the other non-ADHDer is in kindergarten; he’s a handful but is definitely not going to be diagnosed with ADHD. So if my sad parenting skills or lack of experience were causing me to need to medicate my child for ADHD, I’d be hard pressed to tell you why the other two are fine.

9) If you weren’t such a bad, permissive, inattentive, <fill in the adjective> parent. Please see number 8. I think I’ve had equal opportunity to screw them all up.
You know what? There are exceptions to everything. I’m sure there are parents who push doctors for ADHD drugs for Johnny so he can go to the Ivy League school. I’m sure there are teachers who might push parents to do something to control their kids. And I’m sure there are kids who would benefit from less junk food, less TV, and more exercise. But I’m equally sure that unless you have parented a kid with ADHD you don’t know what you are talking about. The behavior is relentless. You don’t just get a day to slide and neither does your kid. You are beyond vigilant in an attempt to keep your kid from hurting themselves or someone else with one impulsive action. You rest when they sleep, and you know what? They sleep less than other kids, too.

But they also love animals. I read that in a book on ADHD and said to myself “You have to be flippin’ kidding me! Other kids with ADHD love animals as much as mine?” And they are typically creative. He is artistic and funny. He is great company if you want to do something athletic or busy. He’s a great conversationalist and is often a joy to be with. But the rest of it you can have. It is relentless. It makes him unhappy too, to never be able to behave. So we have a compromise. He takes a stimulant and gets to feel successful at school and at home. And we sometimes get labeled “bad parents” because we can’t do this without drugs right now. But my sons are both winning from this, and that’s what counts.

1.  Barcott, Bruce; accessed 1/15/2013; Bicycling Magazine website (www.bicycling.com); http://www.bicycling.com/news/featured-stories/riding-my-ritalin?page=0,8.

Jamie Reifsnyder is the mother of three fabulous kids. She lives with her husband, two sons, and four cats in New England. She hopes that some day we’ll understand ADHD, autism, and other neurological differences well enough to enable all kids to blossom.