Raising My Boys 101

As much as I would love it for my boys to have come with a handbook, I do enjoy figuring out how to handle certain situations. For example, my oldest, Mason, was diagnosed with a pretty nasty case of ADHD - with emphasis on the "H". We fought putting him on medication for half of the school year, but when the school started using the word "expulsion" Nick and I decided that maybe the medication would help give him a better quality of life and a chance at having a successful Kindergarten year. At that point we felt totally defeated, but we tried the medication.

After 3 months, the teachers were loving it and Nick and I were ready to take him off of it. Sure, he was doing well in school, but he had become another person. He was depressed and had lost all interest in the things he used to love. I saw my vibrant, creative little boy turn into a withdrawn, timid little zombie.

Again, I felt totally defeated, we were back to square one. I did hours and hours of research on ADHD. I read articles online and books, I knew there had to be another answer. After battling Postpartum Depression with meds and then turning to herbs and suppliments with great success, just knew there must be some kind of natural remedy that would work. After days of research I put together what I felt would be an effective combination of vitamins, minerals and herbs that we were going to try. I knew it was going to take several months before we saw any results, but I was certain that this was going to be much better for my son and my family.

I kept a weekly journal of his progress and it was slow progress. The first month there wasn't much change that we could see. He was still geting positive marks for about 30% of his day, which means the rest of the day was spent out of his seat, disrupting the class and throwing tantrums. Month 2 he was actually having a few good days a week. About 3 out of 5 days he was getting 50%-60%. Now, here we are at the end of month 3 and I am happy to report that Mason is consistently behaving for 70%-80% of his day. The teachers are saying that he is becoming more aware of the rules and making effort to follow them, which means that he is gaining the ability to control his impulses. It is amazing, he is doing such a great job and I am so proud of him for trying so hard to do better.

As I said before, it would be so much easier if there was a user manual for how to handle situations such as these, but since there isn't, I am enjoying every minute of writing my own manual:)