How ADHD Kids Can Bring Parents Together

[Guest guest]

How ADHD Kids Can Bring Parents Together

There's a silver lining to my daughter 's ADHD: the moms of other

children with attention deficit, who understand and support us on our journey.

by Kay Marner

When Penny first got out of bed on Saturday morning, she couldn’t

figure out why her sides ached. She thought back to Friday -- had she done

something unusually strenuous? Then she realized the sore muscles in her

midsection were from laughing so hard the night before!

Penny (mother of Luke), Adrienne Bashista (mother of Little J),

(mother of Javi), and I are online friends who blog about our kids with

attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADD/ADHD). Last weekend we got

together for a moms’ getaway in Pittsboro, North Carolina, where Adrienne lives

with her family and which is the site of DRT Press, her publishing company. I

traveled from my home in Ames, Iowa, to meet with Adrienne for a couple of days

of collaborative work on our upcoming book, Easy to Love but Hard to Raise: Real

Parents, Challenging Kids, True Stories (release date: October 2011). I stayed

two extra days so that Adrienne and I could meet up with Penny, who drove from

her home in the western part of North Carolina, and , who came from her

home just a few minutes away.

Over the course of the weekend we did a few touristy things -- browsed in some

shops, drove around Chapel Hill and the UNC campus, and ate some great meals (as

the sole lifelong Yankee in the group, I enjoyed trying grits, hush puppies,

fried green tomatoes, and authentic North Carolina barbecue). But our primary

activities of choice were relaxing and talking, and the main topic of

conversation was life with our ADD/ADHD kids.

We discussed our kids’ experiences at school, our kids’ ADD/ADHD medications,

and patterns of behavior -- both our children’s and our own in response to

theirs. We talked about how they’ve grown and changed and about our hopes and

dreams -- and fears -- for their futures. We talked until we were hoarse and

then talked more. We laughed like crazy fools.

Believe it or not, all four of our families got along without us. My husband,

Don, almost forgot to give her meds one morning before school, but

before it was too late he remembered. He almost had to take to the ER

when her friend Harry, who also has ADD/ADHD, sprayed eyeglass cleaner and air

freshener in her hair and the excess ran down her back and burned her skin.

Thankfully, a long soak in the bathtub cured that. We all managed to get back to

our families before winter storms hit our respective parts of the country. It

was great to have a break from the stresses of daily life with a special needs

child, but returning home felt even better.

Many of us turn to others -- family, friends, teachers, therapists -- for

support, advice, and encouragement in raising our ADD/ADHD kids. But there’s

nothing quite like talking and laughing with other moms of kids with ADD/ADHD.

After all, they’re the only people who really get it. If there’s a gift in

having ADD/ADHD, it’s the new friends that the ADD/ADHD community has

brought to me.