My child has ADHD

I already realised during the pregnancy what quickly became apparent to everyone else after the birth: the second child, our son, was different, far more lively than the first. Right from the start, it was difficult for him to fall asleep and it was impossible for him to sleep through the night until kindergarten age. If he encountered an obstacle when he was crawling, he would bang his forehead against the floor or the wall. Despite quick intervention, he had bruises all over his forehead.

The paediatrician, whose squeaky duck our one-year-old son threw across the doctor's surgery, noted «autonomous behaviour» in the notebook and shrugged his shoulders helplessly. Unconventional, fidgety and non-conformist behaviour remained our son's trademark.

Today he is sixteen years old. I am delighted with his positive qualities, such as his charming, sensitive and sensitive nature, his willingness to help and his strong sense of justice.

The same applies to our third child, a daughter who ticks in a completely different yet similar way to her brother. The children's impulsive, highly emotional and impatient behaviour and reactions still challenge me today. For years they needed my constant attention so that the day didn't end with tantrums or in the hospital emergency ward.

Hyperactive children function like pinballs

As a mum of three preschool children, I had to focus on getting everyone (including myself!) through the day safely. I tried to teach my children the motto «Only one child can go crazy at a time» as quickly as possible, because I could only look after one child at a time.

Hyperactive children function like pinballs: Until they make it to bed, for example, they bump into at least ten different stations and sometimes the game starts all over again. I had to give up the idea of enjoying dinner as a moment of exchange. We concentrated on encouraging our children to stay seated and eat.

Which rules are so important that you enforce them over and over again?

The questions soon arose: Do the children not want to or are they not able to? Which rules of living together are important enough for us to demand and enforce them over and over again, every day, for years? Walking into the neighbour's house and pulling wrapping paper out of the drawer, climbing out of the window at night to visit the neighbour's child, shouting «help» at the paediatrician because he wanted to play with the tractor in the waiting room, but I had to leave - these are all anecdotes from my children's lives with their own view of the world.

While I was able to give my eldest daughter some freedom early on and even let five be straight from time to time, I had to introduce a consistent and clearly structured upbringing for the other two, partly because the «pinballs» immediately declared the exception to be the new rule.

Directives, short phrases such as «Put all the books in the blue box» are more successful with the two younger ones up to their teenage years than asking them to tidy up their room before dinner. Creative solutions are also needed to balance the different needs of the siblings. For example, the eldest, our bookworm, only found peace and quiet to read when she had her own key to her room.

Starting school brings new challenges: Children who have a short attention span, little stamina, concentration and self-organisation can hardly meet the demands of school. Finding individual maths solutions independently, following verbal instructions, working in groups or working on long-term projects - that was too much for my children.

ADHD quickly focuses on the child's deficits

Many teachers quickly focussed on their deficits. We were asked to make sure that they wrote down their homework, did it completely and carefully and reliably packed the necessary materials - in short: the children should work.

This was also my wish, but they didn't work like the others. After several unsuccessful attempts with paediatricians and school psychologists, we had the children assessed by the KJPD (Child and Adolescent Psychiatric Service). By means of a diagnosis of exclusion, the son was diagnosed with ADHD and the daughter with ADD.

Although the teachers were aware of the diagnosis, I had to discuss missing snacks, forgotten sports equipment or my son's sleeping problems in countless conversations, as if I lacked parenting skills. I was rarely seen as an expert on the children. My requests for written assignments and learning goals as well as complete learning dossiers checked by the teacher in order to be able to support their success at school from home were only fulfilled in phases.

I was grateful to have teachers who taught solidly, perceived the child in a differentiated way, had a sense of humour and generally strong nerves. Nevertheless, compensation for disadvantages is not possible in most schools, and teachers' reactions to a child's special needs due to a lack of resources are usually negative.

For my son, the answer was public school at some point. My ambitious daughter, on the other hand, is experiencing an (almost) normal school career. Worries about her school career and integration into social and working life are my constant companions. But the pressure to justify myself to the outside world is just as much of a problem. The accusation that children are being sedated with medication is hurtful to me. In my opinion, the fundamental question of the existence of AD(H)S is superfluous.

What's more, everyone seems to have formed an opinion on the subject by now. I was inundated with unsolicited tips: have you tried a sugar-free diet, Schüssler salts, globules or electric shocks? We, like many other parents, take a very differentiated approach to our children, educational issues and possible treatment options. There is unabashed pressure from those around us to go in one direction or another, depending on their personal convictions on the subject.

At the same time, some of the specialists I consulted acted in an alarmingly unprofessional manner: paediatricians were apparently able to rule out hyperactivity based on the child's behaviour in the waiting room, and diagnose a parenting problem on my part. School psychologists denied hyperactivity without any further investigations. At school, we were then accused of not having clarified the child, giving (no) medication or the wrong medication.

Despite this external pressure, we parents must remain unwaveringly focused on the child's well-being: How is our son doing? What does the daughter want? How often do they want to be checked and how intensively do they want to be treated? How long should they take medication and for what purpose? Does the medication really make them feel better, or do they just function better? Do they have a right to be different - and at what cost?

I learnt to accept that we are only partially compatible.

We had internal family discussions about treatment and medication options between us parents on the one hand and with each child on the other, without knowing how the children might develop one way or the other. No specialist was able to make these decisions for us.

Our children took medication for four years. It was an incredible experience for me how my son was able to communicate with me in one fell swoop. His social skills developed positively. The medication didn't help him at school. Despite his proven average intelligence, he was soon given special learning goals that qualified him for the special needs class. At the age of thirteen, he began to refuse the medication with differentiated arguments. Our daughter joined him. After long discussions, we respected her wishes.

Finally, the question remains as to how we parents as a couple and as individuals get through the stressful school years and the (even) more stressful teenage years in one piece. I learnt to accept that our children, like us as a family, are only compatible or comparable with others to a limited extent. The social marginalisation of the children brought us closer together as a family. Information on AD(H)S was also an important basis for making decisions. Elpos, the association for parents and carers of children and adults with POS/AD(H)S, not only provides information through its magazine and regionally based events, but also facilitates an important exchange between those affected.

And finally: Conscious time-outs for each individual in the family are important. They create a distance from the stressful family life so that gratitude and joy can arise again and again in watching our exciting children grow up and being able to support them in their experiences.