Welcome back Leahchris -
I can only speak to my own family's experience. I was reluctant to try the stimulent medication and delayed for years. DS15 finally insisted we try it at age 12, and he's been so much happier since that point. His processing speed (not due to perfectionism in this case, he's just real real slowpaced guy, as is DH) is just under average, and wasn't affected by the medication, which suprised me. His working memory however, took a big jump after the medication, from about low 110s to high 120s. This has been a huge help to him in his daily life in compensating for the slow processing.
Before - he was slow and 'not moving' in turns.
Now - he is like a glacier, slow moving and absorbing everything in his path.
Before - he could only learn what HE ws interested in learning.
Now - he prefers to learn what he is interested in, and often self studies topics outside of school off the Internet, but now he can tolerate topics which are not as intrinsically interesting, and topics which he doesn't automatically excel at.
I don't think that all the change was due to medication, we worked and worked at organizational skills,etc, at home and at school above and beyond what most parents would be able to concieve of, but, in the end, it took the medication (or maybe just time, who really knows?) to get it to all come together.
As an aside. My son is also on the 'anxiety side' of things, although not formally diagnosed, it was clear that most of his acting out in early elementary days was triggered by him trying to get in control of himself and avoid his fears. For him, having a brain he can rely on has been key in reducing his fear level. I know that anxiety can cause the symptoms of ADHD as well.
Ultimately as parents we will never know all the answers in advance. I think we have to analyse the availible resource, the particular situation, make a plan, and try it out to create more data.
It sounds like this year's teacher is very caring, which is great. I love that she doesn't want to see kids medicated to make her job easier. But I think that for PG kids (which your child sure seems to be) the goals is to help them keep up with their brains, not damp them down. Ask her to at least fill out the form.
I'm also excited that the vision issue was detected. Hopefully once that is handled the reading level will increase. I wonder how your son does with audio books. With my son, he 'listened' at an unusually sophisticated level, even though he wasn't an early reader. If you haven't used audio books much, I encourage you to use them in hopes of keeping his 'love of language' moving forward while he waits for his vision to kick in. I'm also wondering how your son's reading skills are if you quiz him orally on the various aspects of reading, as in, asking him to take a word, and swap various letters in and out to see what new words that makes, or asking him to spell words orally. My son complains that when he was little, and wanted to learn to read, that I always dragged him over to pencil and paper to 'show' him stuff and that I should have asked him more questions.
Smiles,
Grinity
