An Alternative for Prescription Meds for ADD Children

[Ulfwald]

Natural Supplement

I know this is a contraversial topic, but I feel that the parents out there who have kids with ADD and ADHD need to know about this. I myself am an adult with Attention Deficit HyperActive Disorder. I have been self medicating myself for the past 5 years with this herbal treatment and it works. Also, for those who have heard that their kids will never amount to much, tell the experts to F.O. & Die. I have been told all my life that the best I could hope to be is a person who moves from job to job and will never be stable. this was true for part of my 20s, but after I decided to get it together and really see what I could do to pull it together, I am now very stable, happily married, and semi successful. I still have problems concentrating at times, but for the most part, I feel like I have accomplished much. Going from a 6.50 per hour security guard, to now being a network admin at a Fortune 100 Company. So, to all who know what I am talking about, there is a way, it just may be a little more difficult, or a little longer in finding the way.

 

[Futuramatic]

There was no such thing as ADD or ADHD when I was young... or I woulda been the poster child.

 

[Rendus]

Er. Just like most things, this never worked for me. Ritalin was the most effective, but I built up a tolerance to it after 6 or so years, so it has little effect now. The most effective thing for me personally has been caffeine, actually.

 

[shiner]

I think ADD is a scam! You never heard of this when I was young and I think it's a crime to see the feel good psychonazis blaming this "disease" for kids doing poorly in school, etc... Most kids do poorly in school for one of 3 reasons:

1. Bad Parenting/Parents not involved enough in their kid's education.
2. Bad teaching or terrible curriculum that panders more to the childs sense of "self worth" than it does their education.
3. Dumb kids.

 

[Rendus]

<< I think ADD is a scam! You never heard of this when I was young and I think it's a crime to see the feel good psychonazis blaming this &quot;disease&quot; for kids doing poorly in school, etc... Most kids do poorly in school for one of 3 reasons:

1. Bad Parenting/Parents not involved enough in their kid's education.
2. Bad teaching or terrible curriculum that panders more to the childs sense of &quot;self worth&quot; than it does their education.
3. Dumb kids. >>



Er. As a person diagnosed with ADHD at the age of 9 or so, I'd have to take offense to this.

1. Bad Parenting/Parents not involved enough in their kid's education.

People always think this is just a learning disorder, and it doesn't affect other aspects of life. My parents were quite involved with my education, and were always supportive of decisions I made dealing with it that made sense.

2. Bad teaching or terrible curriculum that panders more to the childs sense of &quot;self worth&quot; than it does their education.

Having been a &quot;victim&quot; if you will of 2 school systems, one in Minnesota (considered one of the best in the US), and one in Nevada (one of the worst), I'd have to say this may have SOMETHING to do with it during school. But, considering I'm STILL attention deficit at work, at home, with friends, during meetings, at a resturant, and so on, I'd have to say this is just a small pile of very stinky BS.

3. Dumb kids.

I won't go into IQ as I feel it's a meaningless statistic, but in standardized testing I was commonly in the 99th percentile, head of any class I took, including Latin until I dropped out, and considered to be one of the most likely to succede not based on grades, I'd have to say that this one dwarves the smaller pile of dung stated in number 2. I won't go into what my coworkers think of my abilities as that's just ego inflating, but suffice it to say people prefer me over anyone else here when asking technical questions.

In other words, I'm anything but dumb.


&quot;You never heard of this when I was young and I think it's a crime to see the feel good psychonazis blaming this &quot;disease&quot; for kids doing poorly in school, etc...&quot;

When you were young, the phrase &quot;Children are to be seen, not heard&quot; was probably rather common, right? This was an officially recognized neurological disorder starting in the early to mid 80s, explaining why you never heard it when you were young.

Remember, when you were young (I'm assuming 60s here), seatbelts were considered dangerous and safe sex was knowing your partner's name. Times change. So does medical science.

-edit- Oh, and before you even go down this path of reasoning, in many cases of ADD/ADHD there are distinct neurological differences in the individuals with the disorder. I'm one of them. There are also studies to find the genetic signs of ADHD, mostly being lead by a study at UCLA, in which I participated. It's been found that most families in which the parents were considered &quot;hyper&quot; by their parents in the 60s have children diagnosed with ADD/ADHD, and when they consent to testing, most parents in these families are also found to have ADD/ADHD. When one parent has ADD/ADHD and one doesn't, their offspring typically have about half the problems as the offspring of two parents with ADD/ADHD. This can be witnessed in me compared to my half brother and half sister.

ADHD isn't a myth or scam. It's often misdiagnosed, yes, but it is there, and it's something many of us have to deal with daily.

 

[Ulfwald]

Shiner, while I do agree with you for the most part, there are those of us who went through months of testing before being diagnosed with ADHD, and as an adult, I Know the difference I feel when I am on the meds, and when i am off. When i am off, my thoughts are so scattered that I can't even concentrate on eating sometimes. So you can imagine what it is like for me, at 33, to not be able to think clearly. ADD is not a wide spread epidemic as teachers and the press would have us believe, but i do believe that their are kids out there who are in need of some medication. You can't say my parents were not good, cause they were never divorced, stayed involved in my life, diciplined me when needed, and always supported me. All i am offereinf here is an alternative to high priced meds, that work for me.

 

[Ulfwald]

Rendus, You sound like me, blew away most standard tests, IQ tested at age 6 was tested higher than either father or mother and they were NHS grads. but, my thoughts were so scattered. they still are to a degree. I am just glad computers are as mainstream as they are now. Because I am good at them, don't know all I need to know about them, but I can do enought to do my job, and run a hardware repair business on the side

 

[ArkAoss]

yeah well, lemme ask you this, is it really that you suffer from a lack of attention? i find wehn talking to add/adhd diagnosed people that they dont have deficit of attention, its just their attention is actually much more acutly and to some points extremly focused. but it bounces around like a pinball. i know, i have those symptoms i have very extremely acute attention on a project say, doing dish's get thru it then something triggers me, say i remember i left my system doing somthing, and i run down to the pc's and im fixin one and dl'ing on the other. my mother, who was diiagnosed by 3 doctors, and psychologist, as having add, has same symptoms; will wake up in the morn and go gung ho on a project, say writing cards, starts working on the cards at a desk, then she might find a glass of water left on the desk, and take it and search the living room for left cups, and then go to kithen and work on the cups, leaving the mess in the office. Another friend i have, im not sure, but she claims to have add same thing, bounces from project to project with extreme focus on the project at hand, but the past project is kinda forgotten. Personally in my mind, i have no sense of time in my hindsite, all those projects kind of float in a 2d timeless haze behind what i'm doing now so when the attention shifts, if ones more time important (and thats what non add people are more attuned to) it gets kindof the same priority, so i force myself to learn a time deapth, and focus on that hazy 2d collage, i can shift slightly better betweem things. .

 

[Rendus]

ulfwald:



<< I Know the difference I feel when I am on the meds, and when i am off. When i am off, my thoughts are so scattered that I can't even concentrate on eating sometimes. So you can imagine what it is like for me, at 33, to not be able to think clearly. >>



This is exactly as I've always been. I've always compared myself to a cat that's doing one thing, then sees something shiny and pounces on it, forgetting what he was originally doing. Most people seem to understand that.

I've been offered positions in magnet programs and such due to my standardized testing performance, but I've always declined due to the fact I could never perform at the level of my test scores if I were to have to do normal classwork. I routinely failed standard assignments, but tests are easier to concentrate on than the meaningless busywork most assignments are, and ALWAYS got high scores.

I'm the kid in school that would get an A in Composition 2 Honors, Latin, and Journalism, and fail English 2. I got straight A's in Drafting/Archetecture (no, I can't spell), yet nearly failed Geometry. Get me interested in something and I'll do better than almost anyone else. Give me boring activities to perform and you'll get little in return.

 

[Ulfwald]

Well put Ark. Yeah, I can hone in on a project, but then something else &quot;jumps&quot; in to the order, and then i am off on another tangent. Hard staying focused, hence, the &quot;scattered thoughts&quot;

Rendus, You and i are just alike. Except I do well in english, Mythology, Geometry. Algebra I sucked in. Computers catch my intrest cause I love a challenge. So that is why i am good at them. Even though i am a student at the local community college, the tech professors usually have me come in to their class and help tutor and sometimes even teach the class. This is a school that teaches MCSE, Cisco, Novell, Oracle and such. We need to stick together, and show others who are truly ADD and ADHD that success is obtainable, just need to find you niche.

 

[Rendus]

Ack... No, I'm not neffing, just trying to reply to everything



<< yeah well, lemme ask you this, is it really that you suffer from a lack of attention? i find wehn talking to add/adhd diagnosed people that they dont have deficit of attention, its just their attention is actually much more acutly and to some points extremly focused. but it bounces around like a pinball. i know, i have those symptoms i have very extremely acute attention on a project say, doing dish's get thru it then something triggers me, say i remember i left my system doing somthing, and i run down to the pc's and im fixin one and dl'ing on the other. my mother, who was diiagnosed by 3 doctors, and psychologist, as having add, has same symptoms; will wake up in the morn and go gung ho on a project, say writing cards, starts working on the cards at a desk, then she might find a glass of water left on the desk, and take it and search the living room for left cups, and then go to kithen and work on the cups, leaving the mess in the office. Another friend i have, im not sure, but she claims to have add same thing, bounces from project to project with extreme focus on the project at hand, but the past project is kinda forgotten. Personally in my mind, i have no sense of time in my hindsite, all those projects kind of float in a 2d timeless haze behind what i'm doing now so when the attention shifts, if ones more time important (and thats what non add people are more attuned to) it gets kindof the same priority, so i force myself to learn a time deapth, and focus on that hazy 2d collage, i can shift slightly better betweem things. . >>



Well, let me just say this... I was distracted by random things about 5 times while I read this paragraph. You summarize what I feel most of the time... I can easily concentrate on something like a game of UT or working on something I enjoy, but anything I get distracted from never gets finished. Cleaning my room has been a several week struggle as I find random things I had lost

I have absolutley no sense of time. The only way I can sort time in my mind is by thinking about events that happened around the same day that were time dependant. But basically, yeah, what you said

-edit, like I said, things I get distracted from usually don't get finished-

My attention span isn't fine grained or anything like that... Like the cat example I used above, I very easily lose track of what I was doing.

 

[ArkAoss]

yup, scattered thoughts, i took the time to read the other posts, about people testing hi and stuff. same here. oh also sometimes i get focused on books ,300-400, or sometimes a 1000 pages, i get so bad i read books cover to cover, wherever i am.. magazines. . . i can usually finish say a starwars novel, the like the thrawn not all three but a book in a night and a day. start like 7pm finish maybe 10 11 next night. well, gotta hit the sack, gonna hafta shovel out from the snow in the morn, agian, it hasn't stopped snowing in ct.

 

[Yeeny]

Shiner=Burke: ADD is for the most part a scam. It is abused by parents and teachers who don't want their kids to misbehave. But my son has it, he has been through two years of testing to have it proven to me. He has a wonderful teacher, and I am a damn good mother to him. I have invested alot of time in educating him at home, along with his schooling. As for him being dumb, that is just wrong to say. There are no dumb kids, just some with problems. Whether they are emotional or mental, kids who don't learn are for the most part unable to because of things in their lives. And my son is far from dumb, he is an A student, who just has to work extra hard to get where he is going. But I know he will do it, because he has the drive, and the people to encourage him all the way there.

 

[DesignDawg]

<< There are no dumb kids, just some with problems. >>


Honestly, there ARE some dumb kids. Dumb as a bag of hammers.

Ricky
DesignDawg