<p>I am inattentive type, too, and I can assure you meds or not I am still loud and talkative. :P</p>
<p>Depending on the med, they sometimes make me more sociable and outgoing. I think when I am less bogged down by the scatterbrain from hell and better able to relax, it is easier to be pleasant. I am unmedicated now and I am a real grouch 99% of the time…</p>
<p>Greenbutton- thank you so much for posting this. The dialogue has provide me with much needed info and comfort. I know it must be heartbreaking, but I think it just illustrates that the path is not always a straight one. </p>
<p>My S, a high school freshman has ADHD, and executive processing issues, along with some sensory issues (sound, taste, smell, touch). He is an introvert with a few good friends, great grades, and a kind heart. S removed himself from meds in September and seems to handle it well (so far). He really wanted to try so we told him we would support the attempt and worked with the pediatrician and teachers through the process. I think we will have to start some time in the future when school gets more challengin.</p>
<p>I wonder if those of you who have survived HS and are navigating college can provide advice to parents who are beginning the journey. What would you do differently? Are there skills that you would have focuse on early? Would you have relaxed about other things- like the planner?</p>
<p>I’ve suspected that while my son isn’t hyper, that the implusiveness associated with ADHD comes out via his loudness and talkativeness. But that is one of the difficulties with ADHD, so many of the ‘symptoms’ can be looked at just as personality quirks or typical developmental issues. So many teenage boys are disorganized and impulsive, how is a parent to know if it all will just be outgrown?</p>
<p>The best Psychiatrist in our area works with young kids all the way up to college students.</p>
<p>delamer – that’s such a good question to ask, I wish (like so much else about ADHD) there was some sort of definitive answer. I think mainstream teen boys are often impulsive and disorganized. They aren’t, however, panicky, anxious, and evasive as a coping strategy on a regular basis. There’s a difference between messy, moreso than Mom likes, and disorganized – can’t find things, can’t remember where to put them, can’t intuitively sort tasks or objects for later use, etc… I also think, ironically enough, that many ADHD men have a very high, unrealistic standard of perfection. If he forgets to fold his laundry, or wash the dishes, it’s to him a sign of his overall failure. </p>
<p>My son also adamantly refuses a coach, or counseling, He has a point — it’s not like he doesn’t know WHAT to do, he just doesn’t know HOW to make himself do it. Example: came home from work, and he had spent almost 45 minutes making a list of the assignments for class for this week. Hadn’t done any of them. Didn’t print out the list of assignments the instructor emailed because he couldn’t think to log in to the household computer (his laptop doesn’t print wirelessly – again, an easy thing to set up but he refuses help and then forgets to do it). Was then checking the list against the webclass and the hardcover book to make sure he had them all. Etc. etc. He’s not TRYING to waste his own time, he just can’t see a better way, and the less he gets done, the more anxious he gets. With his track record, he knows perfectly well that he’s likely to choose the wrong path. So he gets more anxious. Like ema said, a stress loop forms.</p>
<p>I am coming late to this thread. My utterly brilliant S couldn’t master music theory or Ancient Greek, though he could do physics. But he wanted to be a music or classics major. He has ADD but handled all this on his own. I have heard the tears you described months ago. He did graduate from an impressive school, but he had no direction and a GPA that wouldn’t open many doors. He switched fields, earned a 4.0 for two semesters of work in his new field at a local college and has been admitted to a greatly desired Masters Program. Things can turn around.</p>
<p>I can’t say that I have seen the panic and anxiety that you describe, greenbutton, in my son. My son’s endless loop seems to be a lack of self confidence and a Scarlett O’Hara ‘I’ll think about it tomorrow’ attitude. He is almost as if he can’t see how what he does, or doesn’t do, today impacts his success tomorrow. Aside from the school side of his life, this has manifested itself in him not taking good care of his teeth. It is frustrating and embarrassing for both a 20-year-old and his mother to have to have discussions about oral hygiene. Our family dentist has been helpful, but neither he nor I are in the dorm when my son is making the decision about whether to bother to brush before he goes to bed. Not that there should be a ‘decision’ involved (sighs deeply)…</p>
<p>For me, it’s just a matter of finding the “what to do” that I don’t have to force myself to do. My problem with planners is that though I am normally pretty good about filling them out, I forget to open them, or I am working on one assignment I know is due while the planner is across the room and I don’t realize there’s another assignment I need to be working on too, or my handwriting gets too messy and I can’t follow it anymore, or I can’t fit everything in the tiny little boxes. I CAN force myself to use a planner but it’s just simply not a productive use of my time or energy to try. Writing something on my big whiteboard takes me two minutes, it’s easy to erase if it’s illegible without smearing paper and I can write big, and I can see it from anywhere in the room so remembering to LOOK at the planner isn’t a problem. I see it whether I mean to or not. For me, no matter how well I know what I SHOULD be doing, if I won’t do it I just won’t. I have to find the things I will do without it being so hard. I don’t know how it is for other people. But I think it’s a shame OP’s S is so adamantly against help… knowing <em>what</em> to do obviously isn’t enough if you can’t do it. That’s what coaches and therapists are for, to help you figure out a way to go that you can actually cope with without having to beat yourself over the head with it. That gets exhausting and stressful and then you break.</p>
<p>I had a lot of help to get me through school, though no meds for most of college due to finances. In addition to helping me come up with new strategies, my coach met with me at least once a week to go through my syllabi and anything I’d written down to keep track of everything that needed to be done that week. I could just babble in an incoherent mess of words and she’d sort it out and write it down for me in whatever method we’d agreed would work for me. Eventually she gave me worksheets to try and fill things in myself, between the two of us we workd it out. Then each night I would email her and let her know what from the day’s assignments I actually got done… not so much as an accountability sort of thing, and it’s not like she scolded me if I failed miserably and I OFTEN did, but it helped her measure how things were doing so she could immediately intervene if necessary rather than waiting until next weeks appointment to see I had unraveled and ruined a whole week. If I emailed her in a panic at 3am saying I had only gotten half of my paper done she would email me back and tell me what to do next, even if it was just expressing encouragement or sympathy it kept me going. That support system was critical scaffolding for me to learn how to do these things by myself. </p>
<p>Someone that won’t take help isn’t going to get anywhere any time soon… I hope your S figures it out on his own, greenbutton. A lot of kids with ADD are very stubborn, especially the boys I think. 
You’ll just have to keep reinforcing with him that asking for help isn’t a failing if he’s using that help to learn how to do things without help, and that’s the whole point. He’ll keep needing help if he doesn’t move forward. I was stubborn once too, I went on and off meds in about 2-3 year cycles pretty consistently since my diagnosis in 3rd grade. Eventually I had to hit rock bottom and realize I couldn’t do it anymore without some kind of help-- and now I don’t need help.</p>
<p>As I mull it over, I suspect that the ‘I’ll think about it tomorrow’ attitude is probably my son’s way of dealing with the anxiety of not meeting his own, and others, expectations.</p>
<p>Ema - I am not sure why my son was OK with doing therapy but not with using a coach. Maybe it is a guy thing.</p>
<p>It could be, in my case they were basically the same thing and had the same education. It was a nice overlap, actually, because I’d come into the office sobbing some days and we’d spend the first hour just talking through it. Then she could help me fix it. </p>
<p>Boys are tough, I’ve dated a few men with ADHD and I think my current boyfriend has it, too, though maybe atypically… I haven’t decided yet. But he has an impossible time remembering to do anything but the things he most wants to do, and then his to do list piles up, and then he gets overwhelmed and does nothing and will get increasingly stressed and upset about it without actually taking any steps to fix it. It’s maddening but I can tell he is really struggling with it. I keep trying to tell him that if he didn’t let them pile up, it wouldn’t BE so bad but he can’t see that through all the stress from the pile he’s already amassed. He is destined to always have a honey-do list ten miles long. He was supposed to buy new work pants for weeks and he was supposed to find some banks that offer a certain mortgage program we were interested in and call to set up an appointment, and eventually I had to just say, “okay, tell me what you need and I will take care of it,” because he couldn’t get any of it done. I picked out his pants and made the appointment for him. I don’t know if that was the right thing to do… but he just gets stuck and spins his wheels until he digs himself deeper, and he’ll never ask for help before it gets to that point. I’m just as lost as you are, I don’t know what to tell him. He insisted that my white board trick would work for him but he just ignores what’s on the whiteboard… so I guess I need to think of something else.</p>
<p>I would hope that the fact that you can identify with your boyfriend’s issues may help you help him. Different in many ways than dealing with your nearly-grown child. </p>
<p>I am sending you a PM.</p>
<p>I have found some limited success by not being shy about asking for some verification: I had a check to cash for rent, I asked to see his bank balance so I would know it wouldn’t bounce. Without recrimination, which took me some time to learn. So he shows me, I see it is all good, I cash the check. End of that task. He was supposed to make an appointment, I ask for some verification that he has done it, or I do it myself in the first place, knowing he can’t help but procrastinate. </p>
<p>It’s hard to know when to push and when to stop. That’s the big one. He doesn’t study enough, becomes stressed about his lack of preparation, which discourages any studying further. If I try to stop this by standing over him or whatever, it gets the studying done but now he’s stressed about my perceived judgement and/or crowding him. Not to mention, long term it is hardly a solution. And this is how he has managed to stretch a bachelor’s degree into 5.5 yrs. Not all stories end up with great grades and graduate school after all. Right now I would be completely thrilled with a nice solid C+ average and a diploma!</p>
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This exactly describes my 21 year old son. He is currently ‘on break’ from school. Fortunately he has a good job, in his field, and it is doing wonders for his personal growth. He still doesn’t brush his teeth unless I explicitly tell him to, though. On the plus side, he seems to have finally developed a habit of taking his meds. (At school he rarely remembered to take them, and disaster ensued.)</p>
<p>This thread has been very interesting for me.</p>
<p>Are they this way in all aspects of life? Are there areas where the function okay?</p>
<p>For instance, can they make a decision about where to eat? Can they order that game they want? Can they get to the game on time?</p>
<p>What I am wondering is if it’s really important to them, can they get it done? Not what we wouls deem important, like brushing teeth, but being home in time to watch the game?</p>
<p>I am going to come across as clueless I suppose, but how much is ADHD and how mich is someone else will fix it for me</p>
<p>Not buying work pants seems more he doesn’t want to work and not looking for a mortgage lender, well thats not a surprise either, I mean seems if he just postpones long enough someone else will just take care of it</p>
<p>I know there is more, but if those are two examples, please, that’s normal for anybody</p>
<p>It can effect everything even things they very much want to do. They can also have trouble focusing on things they are very very interested in. That is classic ADD.</p>
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<p>Seahorses, I’m going to choose to interpret your post as a legitimate request for information. Son has always described his brain as jittery. cnn online one had a video of the world as seen through the eyes of one of these folks and they actually had the camera shaking.</p>
<p>Do you ever travel out of the country, where you don’t speak the language? Imagine arriving in a large city, where you don’t know your way around and you don’t speak the language. It’s all chaos. That is how I imagine the severely ADD seeing the world all the time.</p>
<p>My son can’t find things. Really truly. Homework sitting right on the desk or table can’t be found. I think the visual element is what has inspired some to have ADD kids work with optometrists. (I don’t think that works, BTW.)</p>
<p>I am an attorney and there are days when I am so busy that barely have time to use the restroom. Every 5 minutes, another call or project or email demands my immediate attention. I have to very carefully prioritize. I think that is how my son feels when he has more than one thing to do at a time…the way I feel when I have 15 things to do.</p>
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<p>You can’t possibly think that these kids - who have always been the smartest kid in the room, who have SAT scores in the 2100-2400 range - do poorly in college because they are waiting for someone to do something for them. Please try to imagine the devistation of an extremely bright person who sees less bright classmates sailing through college, when he can’t.</p>
<p>It can but the examples given were typical for so many…i postpone things because i just don’t want to do them</p>
<p>I do believe I’m the add and ADHD diagnosis, but I wonder how much of the panic attacks, delay tactics, freaking out have been, facilitated when kids are young by frustrated parents who say, oh never mind, I’ll just do it</p>
<p>I knew a kid who never learned to tie his shoes, he would have a tantrum so his parents just kept doing it for him. He learned if he acted frustrated enough he didn’t have to figure stuff out. </p>
<p>I am not dismissing but how much is add and how much is anxiety and I do believe they are different</p>
<p>Yu can see how people with severe OCD can be helped very easily to break the bad habits and panic type behavior, if they really want to be helped and to retrain themselves.</p>
<p>I just dislike the whole take a pill thing to change behavior. Dr dean edell says he is and was add or ADHD and he said if he had taken meds when young he never would have succeeded like he did and learned to deal with himself. </p>
<p>I myself have add tendencies, trust me, but i know how much is avoidance and how much is being bored and then how much is manic get it done.</p>
<p>First of all, hyperfocusing can come with ADD – the ability to concentrate on one thing intently. It is pretty common that people with ADD can focus on something that’s of interest, but it is more than just a matter of being lazy or not caring to do something else. I don’t understand it totally, but I think it has something to do with the ability to shift gears and to prioritize. </p>
<p>Secondly, a pill doesn’t “change behavior.” It helps with some of the attentional issues. But, there are still the habits and patterns that require work and strategies to resolve.</p>
<p>My point is yes I believe there are those that truly have add and ADHD diagnosis. But I also think there are those that would be able to function and get stuff done who don’t</p>
<p>What makes a kid suddenly able to do amazingling well in one major but not another? Sudden cure? </p>
<p>I am not trying to dismiss those that are truly add or ADHD. O cant imagine how it must be.</p>
<p>But I do believe there are some people that are borderline who just don’t want to do stuff, who create drama and work and just hope someone else will take care of it, like buying pants.</p>
<p>Few people with ADD and ADHD do “amazingly well” all of the sudden, although there are fields where ADD isn’t as much of a disadvantage, allowing them to do better in those courses. </p>
<p>And yes, there are people who “don’t want to do stuff” but what we’re discussing here are people with a NEUROLOGICAL disorder. They often CAN’T do certain stuff without extra help in the way of medication, counseling/therapy and effort that will put ‘normal’ people to shame.</p>
<p>PS I only WISH buying my kid pants would make his life just a tad easier…</p>