Life in the gray area... raising a child with an invisible disability...

I am a very "black and white", "right and wrong" kind of person. In my world things are either right or their not. As a Christian I find little room for gray area in my world. Not to say I don't sometimes do what is wrong, I'm just being honest and saying that sometimes I choose to do the wrong thing anyway. There are of course times when I don't realize the sinfulness of my actions.



This is part of the difficulty of raising children with ADHD. That line is still there, but it is much harder to see. Sometimes we can't see it at all.



You can only discipline/punish a child for those behaviors they have control over. The problem with a child with ADHD is that there are certain behaviors over which they do NOT have control. This lack of control is inmeshed with a sin nature.



Some behaviors are easy to discipline - lying, stealing, acts of agression towards siblings.



Others are not so easy to address. Disobedience is not always willful with the ADHD child. But sometimes it IS, and that is where parenting becomes very very difficult.



A child with ADHD often has no clue what it is that he should be doing. He moves to comply, but never quite makes it. Or in some cases slips into his own universe as soon as he turns away from you, immediately forgetting everything you just said to him.



Most of the time the child with more severe ADHD finds life unbearably overwhelming, and even completing the simplest objective becomes a mountainous obstacle for him. He spends his entire day being directed, redirected, and redirected again. He never accomplishes anything, always falls short of his enormous potential, and never has time to just be a kid. This child's life is full of discouragement, there is too much going on in his head and he has not yet learned to tune that out and focus on the objective in front of him. For a child with true ADHD (and not simply a bad case of negligent parenting) medication will help, but it is not a cureall.



In Elijah's case we have found it to curb his hyperactivity, but does little to nothing to help him focus. Without the medication he is totally nonfunctional - he can not do ANYTHING independantly: feeding, eating, and remembering to use the toilet are all things that elude him without and adults constant reminder that he must do these things. Pile home and school responsibilities, and normal extracurricular on top of him and he very quickly becomes depressed and gives up completely. As the child loses his ability to cope, his negative behaviors increase. He responds before he has a chance to process the experience; either erupting in a volcano of anger or crumbling into a heap of tears and sobs.



We will be homeschooling next year, but we still have 6 weeks to go of this school year. His teachers are being so awesome, supportive, and helpful. But unfortunately nothing will change the fact that there is too much responsibility on his shoulders this year. He has too many people he is answering too, he's being pulled in too many directions.

I think I speak for our entire family when I say we will be sooo relieved when this school year is OVER!!!