There\u2019s a boy living down the street from us who has the worst ADHD I\u2019ve ever seen.\u00a0 During the school year, he lives at warp speed, talks even faster, and will twitch if he\u2019s made to sit still.\u00a0 And impulse control? Forget about it.\u00a0 I feel for the kid because the way his body acts is the way my brain feels.\u00a0 He drives me crazy, but he also makes perfect sense to me.\u00a0 He\u2019s nutty but manageable for 9 months of the year.<\/p>\n
And then comes the summertime.<\/p>\n
For some reason I do not comprehend, his parents take him off his medication for the summer.\u00a0 His mom says it\u2019s \u201cto give his brain a break.\u201d\u00a0 His father says \u201cThat stuff is just too d***ed expensive.\u201d It doesn\u2019t really matter what the reason is.\u00a0 It leaves him a wreck.<\/p>\n
His parents both work, and so maybe it\u2019s because they don\u2019t have to see what he lives with during the day.\u00a0 Yesterday, for example, he saw me outside and lurched in my general direction with his head in his hands.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cDo you have any Tylenol?\u201d the 12 year old asked.\u00a0 (I went inside and got him some.\u00a0 His mom said it was okay last year and hasn\u2019t changed that.)<\/p>\n
\u201cHead hurting a lot?\u201d I asked.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt always does in the first weeks of summer.\u00a0 Don\u2019t know why though. Maybe it\u2019s the sun.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
Maybe it\u2019s the withdrawals!<\/p>\n
That\u2019s the part non-medicated people don\u2019t realize.\u00a0 When you go off these drugs, you go through painful withdrawals.\u00a0 So the first 2 weeks of every summer (and every weekend, because they don\u2019t medicate him then) are excruciating for him, filled with headaches, nausea, and confusion.<\/p>\n
Then his summer begins, and his social skills deteriorate.\u00a0 He loses the ability to focus on one thing at a time.\u00a0 His frenetic behavior gets him into trouble.\u00a0 His poor judgement and impulse control mean that by the end of July he\u2019ll be banned from every house in the neighborhood as a protection for our own children.<\/p>\n
August he spends alone.\u00a0 He\u2019s no longer welcome anywhere because he loses all filters when he talks.<\/p>\n
School will come at the end of August and his medication will return.\u00a0 It will take a few weeks to get him back to being the boy he was in May.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Then Christmas vacation hits and the whole two weeks will be withdrawal.<\/p>\n
Is it supposed to work this way?\u00a0 Really?\u00a0 I wasn\u2019t diagnosed with ADD until I was an adult, but I can\u2019t imagine being forced to give back my brain every weekend.\u00a0 I can\u2019t explain to you the fog of confusion which sets in when I first stop my meds. (It clears eventually and returns to the continuous commotion and chatter that is my normal brain function.)\u00a0 I just know how keenly I miss being able to think and function.\u00a0 I know my own son notices immediately if he forgets his pill.<\/p>\n
If you are the parent of one of these great kids (one of us!) and you do this\u2026.please reconsider.\u00a0 Please don\u2019t take his brain away.\u00a0 Ask him how it feels to be unmedicated, and I\u2019ll bet he\u2019ll say the same thing.\u00a0 Please don\u2019t do this.<\/p>\n
And if you\u2019re a medical person?\u00a0 Shame on you.\u00a0 You should know better.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
There\u2019s a boy living down the street from us who has the worst ADHD I\u2019ve ever seen.\u00a0 During the school year, he lives at warp speed, talks even faster, and will twitch if he\u2019s made to sit still.\u00a0 And impulse control? Forget about it.\u00a0 I feel for the kid because the way his body acts […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1979,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-445","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\n