Growing Up ADHD

My Son's Beautiful Family

 

My son is grown and teaching high school now but there were days when ADHD didn't even begin to describe ...


Back then, we debated constantly about whether to medicate or not medicate.  The Doctor said it would help him focus and my son argued that it hampered his creativity and that he wouldn't take it anyway.  After 30 frustrating minutes, I said, "How about this?  Forget giving him medicine for now.  Give me something!"


One of my son's school counselors told me once during one of our many meetings at the principal's office ... that my son was O-D-D (oppositional defiant disorder), but I thought he was just spelling the word ODD.
I looked at him and then my son and said, "It's  okay.  You can say the word,  He knows how to spell."


We were at the Statehouse once when my son was 11 years old.  My girls and I were headed toward a lemonade stand when we realized that he had disappeared.  We all looked around and were getting ready to search our assigned quadrants ... Yeah, we had search and rescue down to a science ... when we heard his voice coming from somewhere above us!  In less time than it took to notice that he had disappeared, he had climbed the "General I have a 20 foot horse" statue and was waving from the top of the horses neck ... standing, of course!
It took three maintenance guys, a "fork lift bucket thing" and 30 minutes to get him down and even then, my son tried to negotiate a ride on the "bucket thing" before he would come down willingly!


When he was a teenager, he was roller-blading on a country highway with a friend.  A Ford F-150 came up fast behind them.  My son's friend skated to the right and my son decided to skate to the left.  The teenage driver in the Ford F-150 decided to speed up and go around them!  He hit my son doing about 50, flipped him into the air and threw him about 100 feet where he landed on his head in a cement culvert.
I got a call from the ambulance as it was taking him to the hospital.  They said he had been hit by a "car".  He was conscious but his injuries were serious enough that they were taking him to General (the bigger hospital in our town).  I left work and got to the Emergency Room shortly after he had gotten there.  I heard him way before I saw him.
It was classic.  He was telling jokes and entertaining the nurses and technicians.  When I walked into the room, he asked me if I had brought his girlfriend.  He wasn't asking for his current girlfriend but the previous one.  He also didn't know what day it was or how he had ended up in the hospital ... other then cuts and scrapes, Drs had checked everything else and he was okay except that he couldn't remember the last few days and was a little fuzzy on things before then but over the next few weeks, a lot of his memory started to clear.
As spectacular as that sounds, he really wasn't too badly hurt.  After-all, he landed on that hard head of his!  In fact, his grades actually improved!  I sometimes tease him and say that if I had known his grades would improve like that, I would have hit him with a truck sooner!

My Son

LOL ... Our family has a MILLION of those stories!  You find out interesting things when you have sons, like...


1.  A king size waterbed holds enough water to fill a 2000 sq. ft. house 4 inches deep.

2. If you spray hair spray on dust bunnies and run over them with roller blades, they can ignite.

3.  A 3-year old Boy's voice is louder than 200 adults in a crowded restaurant.

4.  If you hook a dog leash over a ceiling fan, the motor is not strong enough to rotate a 42 pound Boy wearing Batman underwear and a Superman cape. It is strong enough, however, if tied to a paint can, to spread paint on all four walls of a 20 x 20 ft. room.

5.  You should not throw baseballs up when the ceiling fan is on. When using a ceiling fan as a bat, you have to throw the ball up a few times before you get a hit. A ceiling fan can hit a baseball a long way.

6.  The glass in windows (even double-pane) doesn't stop a baseball hit by a ceiling fan.

7.  When you hear the toilet flush and the words "uh oh", it's already too late.

8.  Brake fluid mixed with Clorox makes smoke, and lots of it.

9.  A six-year old Boy can start a fire with a flint rock even though a 36-year old Man says they can only do it in the movies.

10. Certain Lego'swill pass through the digestive tract of a 4-year old Boy.

11. Play dough and microwave should not be used in the same sentence.

12. Super glue is forever.

13. No matter how much Jell-O you put in a swimming pool you still can't walk on water.

14. Pool filters do not like Jell-O.

15. VCR's do not eject "PB & J" sandwiches even though TV commercials show they do.

16. Garbage bags do not make good parachutes.  Pushing your sister off the shed roof while she is holding an umbrella will not make her fly like Mary Poppins.

17. Marbles in gas tanks make lots of noise when driving.

18. You probably DO NOT want to know what that odor is.

19. Always look in the oven before you turn it on; plastic toys do not like ovens.

20. The fire department in our area has a 5-minute response time.

21. The spin cycle on the washing machine does not make earthworms dizzy.

22. It will, however, make cats dizzy.

23. Cats throw uptwice their body weight when dizzy.

24. 80% of Women will pass this on to almost all of their friends, with or without kids.

25. 80% of Men who read this will try mixing the Clorox and brake fluid.

This, by the way is not my list, but most of it could have been!  I love my son, but I am so glad he has his own home now!  I believe he came into my life to teach me the meaning of tough love, the need for unconditional love and universal understanding and the ability to laugh at ourselves.  He often looked as shocked as I did when we surveyed the effects of his causes.

We would ask him why and he would always have an answer that sounded real good but completely defied all reasonable logic.  He had so many "brilliant ideas" but he never finished them all the way to considering consequences.  Somehow, we all survived those faulty consequences!  We even laugh at them now. 

I smile to think of him teaching a new room of teenagers every 45 minutes ... I can hear him saying, "Don't even think about getting by with stuff in my class.  There isn't one thing you can dream up that I haven't already thought about or done twice.  Be straight with me and I'll be fair.  Lie and I'll know it before you finish telling the lie."  When he recited his speech to us one night, I smiled and thought, "So THIS is why he went through so much stuff as a teenager ... so he could use all those goofy situations to be a better teacher!" 

I have heard he's a good teacher.  The kids think he's funny.  He gets excited about new projects he has planned and he loves for the kids to debate their own scientific theories.  I visited his room once.  The walls were covered with cool star charts and motivational posters.  He had cages and aquariums and jars full of all sorts of critters that had nothing to do with his science curriculum.  He said he likes having things that will start the conversation in the general direction of science.  He said he likes to make the kids ask, "Why?".

No wonder the kids like him!  I wouldn't mind having him for a teacher too!

He and His Wife Can Cook Too!