Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Parenting and Advocacy Should I get DS tested for ADHD?

I would say if there's any suspicion, have him fully and properly evaluated. There's nothing worse than feeling abnormal, dumb and like a failure when at the same time parents and teachers are telling you that you're smart, or worse, an underachiever. You begin to distrust them all and feel hopelessly alienated because nobody is on your side.

ADHD is insidious. I wasn't diagnosed until my 30s. Being unconscious of it was an awful burden for all those years. You go from telling yourself "I'm a failure. I'm smart but I'm stupid" to "That's why I failed. I'm smart but my brain has problems performing certain functions."

I think that's my most important point: You and he and the teachers must become conscious of it if he has it. Then when the going gets rough you know where to point the finger and where to focus the energy finding solutions. Then he won't blame himself and they won't blame him.

Diet and exercise do help mightily, but remember that medications don't have to be an all-or-nothing situation. I do best on very small as-needed doses. A couple of mg of a non-extended release stimulant, for instance, can work wonders to calm the mind, turn off the noise, and aid focus. It's in an out of the system in just a few hours.

One thing I was not conscious of was the anxiety that ADHD produced by me having to constantly control my impulses to simply get up and get the heck out of dodge. No, I don't want to sit still; no, I don't want to look at people when they talk; no I don't want to act all calm, but I have to do all these things to be socially acceptable. It's like a thousand cuts having to suppress that all the time. This is where meds, diet, and coping techniques can help greatly, but one has to first become acutely self-aware of these otherwise unconscious, instinctive realities.

Well, there's always the underlying question of "Do I want to be socially acceptable if it's too annoying for me?" and "Am I *really* getting any benefit from engaging in pro-social behavior?"

Keep in mind there are different levels of severity for ADHD. Your DS might not have it at all, or he might have a mild version, in which case dietary tweaks and extra exercise might be enough to help him

Why take meds when neurofeedback may possibly eliminate or greatly reduce the need for them?

Not if you have a salicylate intolerance it's not... I have one child that can scoff down fruit all day with no problems what so ever, as can my husband. And one who can eat very, very strictly controlled amounts and only certain kinds of fruit, and never in combination with other salicylates... And absolutely never, ever fruit juice.

Intolerance is very hard to get your head around at first because it's a load issue. You may be able to tolerate none, or maybe a small amount, but not a large amount of amines - but most people have no idea that chocolate, oranges and cheese all have high amine content, so they say there is no pattern to which foods cause problems and it's not a food issue. If you have a low amine tolerance then maybe you can have one piece of chocolate, but not a whole bar, or you can have one piece of chocolate but not with a cheese sandwich... We understand this concept just fine with alcohol - we understand that if we drink a glass of beer, a glass of wine and a glass of whisky in quick succession that the effect is cumulative. We also understand that some people have very low tolerance for alcohol (the proverbial cheap drunk) and that some have a very high tolerance (my girlfriend from years ago that could drink a man twice her size under the table), and even that you can increase your tolerance over time (but is that actually good for you?). But very few of us understand all the other chemicals that some people have lower tolerance for that are in a wide variety of "healthy" foods... Who knew my DD hated broccoli for a reason?

Is there a test for this, or is it just by elimination that you figure it out? DS8 (my ADHDer) is crazy about fruit, and this is something I've heard of but haven't looked into yet.

To work out food intolerance you really need to do a strict elimination program and do it properly. You can't do things one at at time or without professional guidance there are too many foods with multiple chemicals. We do the Royal Prince Alfred Hospital diet, which is an Australian model, they publish a fantastic handbook and a cookbook too, and then we had a local dietician to help us get started and to help make sense of our results along the way. Now it's a life style and nothing much has changed in a really long time.

You can google for the RPAH elimination diet handbook and I think they have the whole introduction online so you can read it. But their site is broken at the moment so I can't provide a link, presumably it will be fixed soon though.

Sue Dengate's books (for example Fed Up with Food) are very similar, though I am not sure if they are as strict, but they may be easier for you to get in the USA. Or maybe there is some local equivalent of our hospital based program.

My personal advice is also that if you are going to do it particularly for ADHD, go all out and eliminate dairy and gluten from the start (these would then be the first two you try to get back). Gluten, Dairy and Salicylate seem to be the most likely culprits. From the children I personally know who the diet helps, all of them have a problem with at least one of Dairy and Gluten, most have lost at least one of Amine or Salicylate, and all are preservative, flavour and other "number" free. But all of them have different sets of what they can and can't have.

I have to say though that I think the biggest impact from diet is on the hyperactivity/behaviour, which certainly makes your child easier to live with and less likely to get into trouble at school. However, I am not convinced it's done much for either of my children's inattentiveness and from what I understand research shows that this is the part of ADHD that is most harmful to a child's success academically (and presumably at work).

MumofThree - well said! That's it. Everyone thinks fruits are healthy, but no one questions the contents of the fruit or the quantity, it seems. Have to agree with you about too many foods having multiple chemicals.

My DS's hyperactivity has faded away at school... it's all inattentive now. Same with DD. sigh. They're both pretty hyper at home, but I don't have any issues with it (if anything I appreciate it, because it makes them easier to keep fit). At school they're calm... and somewhere else.

What do you think of eliminating gluten Vs. having a blood test? DS8 tested non-reactive to gluten with both scratch and blood testing. I wonder if it's still worth trying to eliminate gluten?

A blood test for celiac disease rules out celiac (essentially allergy to Gluten), it doesn't rule out intolerance. You can definitely have problems with gluten even without having celiac disease. Some people can't tolerate any at all, some people can manage ancient grains but not wheat... None of my family are celiac, we are all gluten free though (well my husband cheats and eats low gluten grains sometimes, he doesn't seem to have too much of a problem). The elder two children are clearly reactive to gluten both behaviorally and physically, my youngest has been raised gluten free and there is no benefit to letting her have it and too much risk in trying so she's not likely to ever eat gluten.

When I say diet hasn't obviously helped with the inattentiveness it's hard to pin down exactly. My eldest (who does not benefit from ADHD medication) still seems like a complete pixie to me most of the time, but many things are much improved and we saw massive improvement in school performance the first year on the diet and it has been maintained. I am not sure what has changed to make her more able to learn when she still seems to spacey, but the performance change was overt. She started the diet in the last weeks of her yr3 school year, she had the same teacher in yr3 and yr5 (so the same teacher saw her after a one year break, during which she was on the diet) and I know her teacher was astonished at the progress DD had made in a number of areas, reading in particular. It's hard to say exactly which factors had the most impact, diet was not the only approach we used with her, but given how she falls apart with a diet mistake I am confident in saying diet was definitely one of the factors.