Reply to How do I tell DD about her diagnosis?

Forum Index » Kids With Special Needs and Disabilities

Reply to "How do I tell DD about her diagnosis?"

Subject:

Emoticons





More smilies

Text Color: Font: Close Marks

[quote=Anonymous]
My 4 year old told us he had "movies in his brain that he couldn't turn off", so essentially he gave us our first clue. He was incredibly relieved when he was tentatively diagnosed at 6 with ADHD and Asperger's. The doctor was very cautious, but we were sure DS had a rather severe form of inattentive ADHD, which was confirmed later at 10 (Asperger's still unconfirmed).

We shared the news as they came, because there is nothing worse for a child than knowing he is different but not knowing how or why. DH and I are scientists, so for us nothing about this was taboo or hard to understand. We had billed the testing as an examination of how his brain worked, and explained the results as that he didn't have enough neurotransmitters in his brain for him to focus on tasks he didn't absolutely love. That is was a chemical thing, that his brain was different than some other people's brains, but not different from ours, since it was a family trait. Since our son was interested in the neurobiology of ADHD from the beginning, we defined all the terms and he understood. He was even more interested during his neuropsychological evaluation at 10.

We have kept discussing it since then, to explain his middle school accommodations and services, how he should advocate for himself at school, manage his time, hone his study skills, how his diagnosis affects his entire life from his social interactions to his fine motor skills, and which med dosage to choose for which days - on Saturdays he takes a lower dose to attend his native language school than on weekdays, and he is off meds completely on Sundays, which we have done our best to keep low-key and event-free.[/quote]

Options

	Disable HTML in this message
	Disable BB Code in this message
	Disable smilies in this message

Review message

Search Recent Topics Hottest Topics