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

That's fantastic My friend wasn't so lucky, unfortunately.

If this is true (and I'm assuming you're right) why is this the case? If medications have been around for 40+ years, surely this has been enough time for science based studies of non-medication alternatives?


I was told by our school district psychologist to medicate DS8 diagnostically. (You're right, it's probably much faster.) He said worst case scenario it would take about 6 months (assuming the first or second medication didn't work - by 6 months he meant that's about as long as you'd continue to try changing meds/doses that weren't working before you'd assume that it actually isn't ADHD).

Wow. A lot to think about here. Polarbear, it might be a vision issue, but I seriously doubt it. (If it turns out NOT to be ADHD, I will look into that, though). He had a muscle issue with his eye which made it hard for him to focus both eyes on one spot, and we had the option of either doing surgery (covered by insurance) or eye therapy (not covered by insurance). We ended up dropping over $4000 out of pocket for the therapy, and it worked really well. The suggestion of visual processing problems was made by the optometrist during a routine eye exam, not due to actual testing.
I'm thinking I may check with my insurance company to see if testing is at least partly covered. My husband is military, and in the 11 years we have been married, the eye therapy has been the only thing any of us have needed that is not covered, so I can go from there to see how to approach it. I agree that I don't think I want the school to do it - I have issues with the fact that school employees are overworked and underpaid, as well as the fact that the school gets extra money for every kid that is labeled as having a learning disability.
Diagnosing ADHD by using drugs? Are you kidding me? As I said, I'm not opposed to medication IF it is really needed, but really - how is that even legal?

Epoh - Your list sounds JUST like my son! Just this morning, before school, I told him to go brush his teeth and hair, and get his shoes and socks on. He got the teeth, remembered the hair only because he caught a glimpse of himself in the mirror, then sat on the couch with a book. When I asked him why he wasn't wearing shoes and socks, he said, "Oh, is it time? You never told me!" Or last night when he was working on his homework. The directions were to draw TWO figures with a specific perimeter, then compare the areas of each. He drew one, found the area, then moved on to the next problem. ARGH!

Has anyone tried changing the child's diet? I've heard that a high protein, low sugar diet helps, both for kids with and without ADHD. But I have found basically no actual research on the subject. Just parents who swear by it. I was thinking of trying dietary changes before I actually took him to a doctor.

There have been some good studies in the UK regarding diet & behavior. It was not specific to ADHD, but a diet with lots of fresh veg, high in protein and low in sugar produces better behavior and better concentration (=test scores) in children. That all happened, iirc, around the time Jamie Oliver was working on changing the UK school lunch system. I'm still wading through my morning work emails, but if I get a chance later I'll dig them up.

One thing that's also been recommended, but there aren't really any studies for is large Omega-3 supplements (like 2 or 3x what's normally recommended). Again, there's really not much down-side, so we do this as well. I can't say I see much difference with the fish oil, but I'm sure it's not hurting anything either, and everything I've read says fish oil is good for you.

We did a lot of diet changes with DS when he was younger... from about age 3-7 red dye would turn him into a crazed monster. It was pretty insane. It doesn't appear to effect him much anymore (thank god), but you might try eliminating food dyes and then slowly adding them back after 2 weeks and see if there are any reactions (red and yellow seem to be the more common triggers.)


I also wanted to add, I do not have anything against alternative treatments for ADHD! Neurofeedback seems very promising, and I've heard of some people seeing results from the CogMed stuff. My only concern is people spending thousands and thousands of dollars on something, without understanding the true efficacy of it.

We were struggling with what to do with suspected ADHD in our 6 yr old last fall. After researching and talking with some behavioral health professionals I respected, we decided on a course of action.

I am very uncomfortable with the subjective nature of using checklists solely to diagnose a child with ADHD. Too much risk for me. Instead we opted to do SPECT Brain Scans through the Amen Clinics. Dr. Amen is very cutting edge in what I believe will eventually become mainstream approaches for diagnosing and treating Neuropsych issues. He likes to ask why Psychiatrists are the only doctors who never look at the organ they treat.

My son had 2 brain scans and a full evaluation with one of the Amen clinics. The Neuopsychiatrist who handled his case showed me pictures of his brain where I could SEE his ADHD pattern, his anxiety and PTSD, and even a processing issue all showing up in his brain. Seeking a definitive diagnosis was important to me because the outcomes are quite serious for those with untreated ADD yet I didn't want my HG child labeled inappropriately if other things were really at work with the issues he was having.

In the clinics' extensive practice, they have found that many of their patients have vitamin deficiencies in nutrients that impact healthy brain function. My son was clinically deficient in Vitamin D (this is very common)and on the bottom end with his Iron which was far below the theraputic levels the clinic looks for. Also tested were Zinc and Copper. Those 4 are very significant for ADD as well as other brain issues since they impact things like the production, release, and distribution of insulin as well as being the building blocks for some critical neuro transmitters.

Our treatment has begun with correcting these deficiencies which has already had a promising effect on behavior without any prescriptions thusfar. We are following up with blood tests to get his levels up where they need to be.

A surprising effect of our foray into ADD has been that we have discoved several adult family members who had never been diagnosed but had many impacts in their lives including struggles with addictions from self medicating their ADD symptoms. ADD is one of the most heritible of psychological disorders with a 60% chance of having a child with it if one parent has ADD and a 90% chance if both do. It's been a truly fascinating journey.

As you are deciding what to do with your child, a great book to read would be Dr. Daniel Amen's 6 Types of ADD. These types are the result of thousands of brain scans with these recurring patterns. The critical point of the 6 types is that they respond best to different treatment approaches. My son's type in particular reacts very poorly to the standard ADD meds tending to become worse rather than better. I have a lot of confidence in the balanced approach Amen recommends with diet, excercise, vitamins, and prescriptions when needed.

The downside to this is expense. The scans are expensive and few clinics know about this approach. When we researched cost we found a local place that did the SPECT scans but found the cost to be almost equal to that at one of the 5 Amen Clinics. We choose to travel several states away to the "pioneers" of this approach given the similar cost.

I hope you find your answers. There is some peace for us with understanding and we are more patient and thoughtful with our parenting as a result.

Oh, dear! Vitamin deficiencies! He is kind of a picky eater, and I have never forced him to eat anything. While he has gotten better, it would not be entirely surprising if he had a vitamin deficiency.

I know... I agree. If only it wasn't so expensive. In my friend's case it wasn't a big lump sump payment, it was successive small payments (like visits to the chiropractor, for instance), and I guess they saw that it was working so they continued.


One of the first things our pediatrician recommended was a Vit. D supplement for DS (400 IU). I bought the drops and add one to his protein shake every day.

I've heard (from other ADHD parents) that caffeine works as well. When I asked my family doctor she had never heard of it for treating ADHD, but said that carefully done in small doses would be safe enough. I'm not sure how to get DS to drink tea or coffee without the sugar though. That's the problem... there's caffeine everywhere that they'll eat/drink (chocolate bars, pop, etc) but it's full of other garbage. Getting caffeine isn't the problem - isolating it from the other crap is. lol.

Funny you mention zinc - today I just bought up lemon zinc lozenges. Hopefully those will help too.

To get to therapeutic levels of Vitamin D the clinic recommendation is 4000 IUI D3 daily whenever you cannot get full summer sun. Our family doc initially prescribed 2000 IUI.

If anyone has concerns about vitamin deficiencies your doc can run the blood tests to check but remember the lab's norms aren't going to be the same as the therapeutic levels. Generally the majority of docs haven't kept up with the recent research on non-pharma treatments and the recommended levels haven't been updated in eons. I'd be glad to share the target levels we were given if anyone wants them. It made a lot of sense to me that not getting enough vitamins could negatively affect brain function and we have our share of food issues. In addition a number of things can limit the absorption even if someone is eating a stellar diet.

I've been surprised how much affect we have seen from *just* vitamins. I wouldn't have believed it could help so much.

My response to this is very long, my time is very short... Let's see how I go.

There is mounting evidence that careful elimination diet absolutely helps with the symptoms of ADHD - look for an article published in the Lancet last year. My own children are on elimination diets, my child with aspergers has the most dramatic response to diet (and is the most restricted), she was previously diagnosed with ADD and medication trial did not work convincingly so it was quickly stopped. Diet alone continues to be a critical part of her life. My middle child responds to diet enough that we keep doing it, she responds less than my eldest and got many more foods back during the challenge phase, so she is much less restricted (just numbers, dairy and gluten). She has combined type ADHD and for her medication is dramatically effective, far more so than diet. So to recap I have one child for whom diet is crucial and medication did not help her attention issues (and has since been diagnosed with Aspergers). And one child for whom diet helps but medication is dramatically more effective.

My personal feeling is that for children with neurological differences like ADHD/ASD they have very very sensitive systems and are more reactive than other people to diet, chemicals in the environment, heck even the weather. So controlling those things as much as possible can help enormously (we use no cleaning chemicals, carefully selected washing powders, shampoo, etc). But for many children who truly have ADHD diet alone will not be enough.

My DD is pretty well behaved, her teachers were not complaining to us about how disruptive she was. We have always taken the most natural approach to everything that we possibly could, so medication was hard for us to come at. But after a lot of reading and research I ended up concluding that a trial was worthwhile and the results that we see in our middle child are simply indisputable. She's a little girl who deserves to be able to hear when she is spoken to, say "Yes, I'll do that!", actually do it and enjoy the success of regularly being able to do what is expected of her, her handwriting is radically improved on medication, her piano playing, her reading, her ability to look you in the eye and talk back to you... It's really quite astonishing. For us we also feared where we could see things going with her oppositional behaviours and wanted to simply not go there. And I think that a lot of that behaviour is rooted in it being too hard to even process the instructions off medication - so she will pretend she doesn't WANT to listen/comply in order to save face because she doesn't want to show that she actually CAN'T listen/comply.

Final thought - My child for whom diet makes the biggest difference was an extreme picky eater. She refused solids until 2.5yrs+ and it took us until 8-9yrs old to get her eating a reasonable range of foods (slowly, gently and respectfully working on it all the time). She lost almost ALL the "healthy" foods she had never wanted to eat in the first place and is healthier for it.

My 9 year old has ADD, and after having her tested I realized I have it too. I only wish my own parents had thought beyond the stereotype of ADD/ADHD being a hyper kid that can't sit still, my life may have been very different. We both take meds now and it's like another world. My house has never been cleaner for a start!

She displayed all of the symptoms back when we lived in Europe and she had never eaten an artificial color or flavor in her life (they are few and far between now but much harder to avoid). We tried elimination diets, she takes a multivitamin and omega 3, we tried martial arts, nothing worked like this. I was super wary of her being misdiagnosed, and terrified of medicating her, but the difference was noticeable almost right away. She is on the lowest dose of med, and we plan on trying to get her off them as soon as she feels she can handle it. But I'm glad we did it.

As for why there aren't studies on the efficacy of non-drug treatments, it's because drug companies pay for studies. There's no benefit to them funding any of those studies, so they don't get done. Sad but true.