We knew our son was special when he was born—as most parents do about their children.
The kindergarten teachers were the first to suggest he was different from the other kids. By elementary school, the difficulties were becoming clearer.
By middle school, he had become somewhat problematic and narrow in his interests. We didn't discover until he was fifteen—almost by chance—that we had been living with a child whose behavior matched ADHD without hyperactivity.
As parents, we kept supporting him as we always had, but now through a different lens. We stopped blaming him and began to recognize, finally, the real limits that had sparked so many conflicts and reproaches:
- poor independence
- extreme fatigue
- lack of drive
- constant distraction
- unreliability
- inability to plan and organize
- inconsistency
- hypersensitivity to pain
But like parents of hyperactive children, we too found ourselves feeling—many times over these years—bewildered, exhausted, angry, overprotective, inadequate, worried, and trapped. The daily repetition of difficult situations seemed endless.
We were spared the aggression, restlessness, and oppositional behavior that unfortunately isolates so many children and their families. But children with marked attention deficit without hyperactivity tend to withdraw into themselves. They isolate. They sink into depression on their own.
As he grew, it became easy for us to confuse his difficulty connecting in large groups with simple shyness and reserve—especially because one-on-one, he was often delightful. For him, though, it cannot have been easy to be labeled for so long as "lazy," "careless," "clumsy," "superficial," or "narrow-minded."
At ten, he managed to describe his struggle perfectly in a fantasy story set in his fifth-grade classroom. In it, he imagined creating "energy pills" that would finally make him feel like the other kids. We never could have known how prophetic that essay would prove to be.
His inability to keep pace with the rest of the world had created a vicious cycle that we parents felt had to be broken somehow. We wanted change to be a starting point for him, not just a final goal. His struggle pushed us to explore everything the scientific, psychological, and social worlds had to offer—resources for children and adolescents struggling with severe attention and concentration difficulties, who face enormous pressure at school and in life.
This led us, after a second diagnosis confirmed abroad, to add medication to his psychological and behavioral therapy.
We approached medication with all the caution and worry we had once reserved for antibiotics or anti-inflammatories. But we accepted this support, knowing our son needed to break free from this "long sleep" and find some peace. We did not see medication as a sign of surrender or a shortcut, but rather as a sign of humility before the simple truth that we parents were not enough.
It was help—effective and immediate—to build what we considered essential for his future: a healthy sense of self. His self-esteem had already been eroded by the delay in diagnosis.
The changes and positive results came quickly. When he brought home his report card with dramatic improvements, we were moved to tears. Proudly, he pointed out to us that he didn't think the medicine deserved the credit—that he had to study to earn these grades—but that finally he understood that he needed to study, and how to study.
Our joy today is great for this positive turn, which has rippled through his relationships with others as well.
Laura, 2007
ADHD and Television
A study published in the American journal Pediatrics, conducted on 2,500 children, found that television exposure—particularly the number of hours children aged zero to six watch daily—significantly influences the development of attention disorders and hyperactivity. According to the researchers, it is not the content itself but the unrealistic, rapid-fire images in many programs that alter brain development. (From the website of the Istituto Superiore di Sanità - EpiCentro: L'epidemiologia per la sanità pubblica.) ===