Irena a couple of years ago I attended a conference on 2E issues. The keynote speaker was a paediatrician who sees a lot of gifted kids with ADHD. How he talked about and explained ADHD completely changed my perspective. Completely. One of the things he talked about is that when he sees kids coming in with auditory processing issues, visual processing issues, SPD, etc particularly multiple of these issues, his response is not that those conditions aren't real - they absolutely are - but that they are symptoms not causes. A kid with a cluster of neurologically odd issues (my term!) is almost certainly a kid with a more global neuro-developmental issue that ties it together (ie ADHD, or possibly ASD). And he sees a lot of kids whose sensory processing issues simply disappear when their ADHD is treated. He spoke for over an hour and I've written a paragraph, so obviously I've barely touched on what he had to say that was so compelling and I've paraphrased badly.
But what this leads to is - there were so many parents at that conference who spoke about how they had dragged their child from pillar to post looking for an answer, either being told their child was too normal for ADHD (but had SPD, or irlen syndrome, or, or, or), or being unwilling to be accept that it was ADHD when this was suggested. So many mothers in tears over the years they refused to consider ADHD when retrospectively it was the answer that made sense, tied it all together, and medication was the only thing they'd ever done that made an appreciable difference to their child.
Not long before this conference I was talking to my best friend who knew her son had ADHD, but didn't want to label him or put him on medication. She reminds me to this day how I said to her "Oh but even if he was diagnosed you would NEVER put him on medication would you?" Now my own child is on medication. And I worry about it everyday, it's a big deal. But she is so painfully, obviously better off ON medication that every day I conclude the consequences of not treating are likely to be worse than the risks of medication. The very first day, when I asked her if she noticed anything she said "I feel better, I like it, I want it to last all day, every day." This reminded me of the woman at the conference, who stood next to me with tears streaming down her face and told me how after years of avoiding an ADHD diagnosis she finally gave in and tried medication and half an hour after her first dose her daughter said to her "Mum, my head and my heart feel right for the first time in my life."
