climbing under the influence

 I should say, "not under the influence"! I did an inadvertent experiment today. I forgot to give my son his ADHD medication before school. Wow! I picked him up from school and a different boy got in my car. The small space was bombarded with decibels of run-on potty talk exclamations! The boy on meds climbs in the car, says "Hi Mama" and we have a nice conversation about what he did at school that day. I did manage to get him to sit down at the table and do some math homework before heading off to climbing class, but reading was out of the question. After climbing class his instructor extraordinaire mentioned that he was full of energy and implied that he had trouble stopping some too-silly play with another kid. The rest of the evening was equally boisterous and frenetic.

I know many people don't want to medicate their kids or even have them evaluated for attention deficit and impulse control issues, but the ADHD medication is saving my sanity, improving my relationship with my son, and making our house a better place to live.

Penny Williams at a mom's view of ADHD published an great post on the stigma of ADHD medications for kids.