Reply to New York Times Magazine article questioning adhd commonplaces (including meds)

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]The fact that the medication does not help academic outcomes is mind blowing to me. Why take it especially with all the side effects?[/quote]

I don't think we can call that a "fact." Maybe it will vary person to person (or incorporate the way teachers inflate grades in some places). It absolutely changed academic outcomes for our kid.

We didn't get a diagnosis for our inattentive ADHD kid until late middle school, when innate intelligence and behavior cues could no longer cover for what turned out to be a 3rd percentile attention score (!!). This inattentive kid in elementary school (who could read and do basic math by kindergarten) was deemed well behaved and maybe just of average intelligence. Grades, such as the are in elementary school, were fine, but nothing was really being learned -- it's elementary school and the bar is low for a really bright kid.

By the time academics becomes heavy reading an lecture based, an inattentive kid starts falling behind because inattentive ADHD (if you ask someone who has it) is like being rendered temporarily blind and/or deaf randomly and without warning or even knowing it happened half the time. It makes me wonder if there is a link between inattentive ADHD and absence seizures. It can be for a stretch, where you zone out for half a class, or an instant, where you miss key words in a discussion or every other sentence or half of the point being made (and so you misunderstand, miss key words or actually learn things incorrectly because you only registered half of the explanation). It's like your brain was turned off and time moved on, and when your brain turns on again, sometime you realize it happened and sometimes you don't, but you certainly missed half the class lecture and are certainly behind in whatever you were reading and probably have to start over. How can that NOT affect academic outcomes?

Medication for our kid decreased the frequency of these episodes and also improved awareness of when it was happening, so he more often knew when he missed something and could go get help. In the past, his notes would be half a page compared to other kids with 4-5 pages from the same class, but he didn't think he'd missed anything! Now he either doesn't miss it or catches himself when he does. Grades aside, he is clearly learning more, and homework takes half the time it used to because he isn't constantly losing his place and rereading - it still happens, but less frequently. And it does show in grades that went from Cs and Bs to As and Bs. This is a kid who scored over 700 on both sections of the SAT (so no dummy), but in class before medication would either fail a test he had studied for for hours or get an A -- depended on the day! Teachers and tutors and our son were flummoxed because even when he obviously knew the material he would fail. Medication changed that - not to perfection, but so much better.[/quote]

May I ask what medication? Did it take a lot of trial and error to get there?[/quote]

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