I thought back to all the times I was hard on her for not keeping her room to my standards, for just throwing her stuff all over the place and not being able to focus on any one thing, being so easily distracted. It made perfect sense, much as I didn't want to accept it.
I would send her off to her room to do a few things only to come back and find not one of them done. Honestly..it drove me crazy!
So, when I heard there was a reason for all these behaviours, not just her trying to be disobedient; something inside of me broke.
Our Dr put her on a low dose and from day one her teachers noticed a huge difference in her. She was listening and no longer disrupting the class, her grades improved. The meds were only for school, for concentrating on her lessons. She would not be on them on the weekends or any school vacations.
This year however, in chatting with her teacher one morning, the thought went through my mind that perhaps her dosage needed to be increased. She didn't seem to be doing as well. She was slipping into her old patterns.
However the next morning a light went on! It was one of those aha moments. I clued in that she had not been taking her medication.
I didn't think at her age that I needed to stand over her and make certain that she actually takes the pill but apparently I should have.
When confronted about it her reply broke my heart.
"Mommy, I just wanted to prove to everyone that I don't need the pills anymore"
How she hates having ADD . She hates to be labelled a stupid ADD girl as some kids have called her. I can't count the times she has prayed that she would wake up and not have it anymore.
My heart hurts for her. How I wish I could just take an eraser and blot this out of her life so she no longer has to struggle with it and feel that she is "different" than everyone else.
I long for her to realize her full potential. She IS smart, compassionate, sweet and giving. This is the girl that spent some of her birthday money on a beta fish for her brother Ben to replace his fish that our cat killed. Rather than spending it on herself she spent it on her brother and totally brightened his day. She was so excited that day!
She doesn't want to need the meds that help her so she was trying to do it on her own without them and it just did not work.
How many times do we do that in life? All of us have done it at one time or another. Trying to do life in our strength without God's help, and end up falling flat on our face. Just like it says in Phil 4.:13...that "I can do all things through Christ, who gives me the strength..."
I believe that without Him we can do nothing..and we will fail if we rely on our own strength.
It's kind of like getting in a car that has no gas and expecting to go somewhere...it's not gonna happen!
Recently my mother in law was chatting with a friend who is a global worker in another part of Central America. Her grandson had come to visit for a year and his ADD symptoms all but disappeared while he was living there. The reason? They believe that it is because the food there does not have all the additives in it that the food here has.
I have also heard that in Honduras, ADD is unheard of. I don't even know for sure if her medication will be available there.
Perhaps once my daughter is on a different "diet" her symptoms too will disappear...
that's this mother's prayer anyway.
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