Diane: Danielle was always different. Moments after birth, when the obstetrician put her to my breast to nurse, my husband, Paul, and I chuckled at the exuberance she showed about attacking her first meal!
I used to laughingly say to Danielle that if she had been born first, rather than her sister, we would have not had any more children. However, there is a grain of truth in every joke, and the truth in this case is that Paul and I would never have had the energy to endure another toddler stage! We barely survived that one.
I had a difficult pregnancy with Danielle, and I have since learned that what I went through is not unusual for mothers who deliver children diagnosed with ADHD. My prenatal care was relegated to the "complicated pregnancy" unit of our PPO, and I saw the resident obstetrician weekly.
During the course of those visits, I had one incident that secretly terrified me. It happened during an ultrasound procedure, when I overheard the technician say to the nurse, "The brain is not developing as it should." At the time, I was attending a Bible study where I was the youngest member. When I told the dear, older women in the study about my fears regarding my baby's brain development, they began to pray for her at the conclusion of every meeting.
I believe with all my heart that our daughter is a direct answer to their prayers, for when she was born, her body was healthy and her brain was fully developed. And she was incredibly alert. If she could have talked, she would have shouted, "Hello, world! Here I am! Get excited!" I have always thought of her as God's miracle.
I guess I was like every other mother of a newborn in that I had so many expectations for this precious child. So I simply ignored the volume of signals that Danielle was not the average kid. She never napped as an infant, but since I was an extremely active person myself, I accepted this as an advantage. Danielle was always cheerful and seldom cranky, so she was a pleasure to have around, even if she didn't sleep!
However, when she was about one year old, her activity ruined what was supposed to be a restful camping trip. Forget the playpen - that wasn't for her! Danielle toddled around our big campground, with her sister, her dad, and me taking turns in pursuit. She walked and walked and walked, hour after hour, until we were all at each other's throats from exhaustion. I took her into the camper with me while I fixed dinner, but she wanted to continue to run in the great outdoors. Trying to escape, she leaned against what we thought was a childproof door. The door gave way, and Danielle executed a perfect one-and-a-half somersault out into the dirt! We thought this was surely only a freak accident, but within the next half hour, she managed to wreak havoc on the door twice more. When she bloodied her nose on the last descent, we cut the trip short and went home.
When our older daughter, Nicole, was eight years old, Paul took her on a Summit Adventure, a Christian outdoor camping and rappelling trip. Nicole thrived on this trip, but then, she would actually think before leaping off a cliff. Not Danielle. Her way of approaching any adventure was to throw her entire body into it, ignoring any danger and enduring the physical pain and broken bones that resulted. Convinced that Danielle would kill herself, my husband never exposed her to Summit Adventure. Instead, we directed her toward girls' sports, and that is where she excelled.
Sports afforded our daughter an avenue in which she could run and "punish" her body until she literally dropped from exhaustion. She loved it! We put her in every sports program we could find because this was a positive way to channel the abundant energy she possessed. We never considered her hyperactivity a problem that might require a physician's attention or medication. ADHD was not even on our radar screen.
When ADHD became a popular talk show subject, we brushed it off as simply another fad disorder. My husband, a college professor, thought of it as an overused reason to avoid responsibility.., the excuse to end all excuses in order to obtain leniency on exams and homework. Besides, we thought ADHD was only for dummies, and our child was the high school valedictorian.
Danielle had a plethora of opportunities available to her for college because of her scholastic and athletic abilities.
She was named the All State shortstop in softball, and she played forward on a soccer team that either won the State Championship or was a finalist all four years she was in high school. The letters from wonderful institutions of higher learning filled a large packing box in our home office. They came so often, and in such abundance, that we simply didn't open them after a while. Danielle's selection was a surprise: She chose to go to an Ivy League college with no academic or athletic scholarships.
We didn't think it unusual that Danielle would have difficulty with some of the subject matter in college, and we prepared her not to expect the same grades she had achieved in high school. She told us several times that she was struggling, but we told her that getting B's and C's was not something to worry about. She also verbalized some concerns about her relationship with her college softball coach, but again, we brushed this off as part of the "freshman jitters." We received a telephone call from our daughter during her sophomore year at Dartmouth.
"Morn, I went to talk to my physics professor today. I can't understand why I'm having such a hard time in his class. He says that he has noticed some characteristics about my style of learning that may mean I'm ADHD, and that's why I'm having trouble. He thinks I should be tested for it!"
In my ignorance, I responded, "The guy must be nuts. High school valedictorians don't have learning disabilities! These Ivy League intellectual types always have to have a theory about why kids are not learning in their classes because it takes the criticism away from them as instructors. Ignore him! There is absolutely nothing wrong with you!"
Several weeks later, Danielle called again, "Morn, my professor is really encouraging me to go through testing. Do we have insurance that covers it? He says it's pretty expensive." "But Honey, there isn't anything wrong with you. It's OK not to get great grades in every class. Maybe physics just isn't your thing. The only reason those academic types want kids like you to be tested is to try out their educational theories on human guinea pigs!"
"But Morn, I really think he is trying to help me. He thinks I'll make a wonderful engineer because kids with this type of disability think outside of the box. He wants me to understand why I'm having trouble because he thinks it will help me deal with my frustration better."
"Danielle! We just got the bill from the doctor who did your testing, but there aren't any results attached to it. What happened? Was it a complete waste of time?"
"Oh! I guess I forgot to tell you! The doctor says that I have ADHD/ Combined Disorder with an unspecified auditory learning disorder."
"Honey! That's just gobbledygook to us. What does that mean?"
"Well, I scored at the highly superior level in my IQ testing, but I scored in the mental retardation level for auditory processing. It just means that I have trouble translating anything I hear into practice."
My husband and I were stunned to learn about Danielle's auditory problem. Suddenly, many things we had simply overlooked in her childhood surfaced for re-examination, including our own prejudices about people diagnosed with learning disabilities.
To find out what will happen to Danielle after she was diagnosed with ADHD, you can read my next post. To learn how to handle ADHD children, you can get ADHD Natural Remedy Report.
