Queen of the Distracted

Imagine life in a house with 6 kids - now imagine if 5 of those kids and their father have ADD/ADHD (Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder) - that is our house! Welcome to an inside view of my life and our home dominated by ADHD... THERE IS NEVER A DULL MOMENT!

Ladies and Gentlemen! Boys and Girls!

"Ladies and Gentlemen, Boys and Girls!"

Those were our oldest daughter Rachel's first words, from the time she was a toddler she would belt them out proudly standing on the arm of the couch. At the time we had no idea what ADHD was or that it would play such a central roll in our lives.

Since then we have learned a lot, not the least of which is how many individuals and families suffer in silence. We have experienced first hand how misunderstood and misrepresented a disorder can be.

As a family we decided to take action - to risk embarrassment and labeling to get this important message out to the world. Come join our family, share in our lives, and see ADD/ADHD as we see it...
A gift with a heavy price tag.

WELCOME to life in the ADD/ADHD House!

Thursday, February 19, 2015

On War and Words

As I was writing this post I couldn't help but think of the little boy who was obsessed with little plastic army men. He would lay out elaborate battles. Sound effects would roar from him as the battle played out. That obsession never really went away. It morphed into drawing battles, reading about batttles, an obsession with eras of weapons and armor and types of warfare.

All this from possibly the most tender hearted little boy on Earth. I asked our psychiatrist about it once. I was having a hard time reconciling the huge difference between his character and this obsession. Our doctor explained in a way that I had never considered. He said that for our son his ADHD, his anxiety, his OCD were all things he batttled everyday. Like the wars he orchestrated he was fighting his own battle with his mind.

One of those struggles was writing. In fact, I have written about it before on here many times. We were in the middle of that struggle when I started blogging about ADHD. He couldn't organize his thoughts enough to write. It was painful to watch him struggle through a sentence. Paragraphs were laughable and an essay was impossible. His handwritng was part of that problem. Too many thoughts racing through his mind certainly didn't help.

After years of work he wants to be a writer. He already has three book series planned. If you would have told me when he was seven or that he would be in Honors English in high school I would have laughed. But here we are and here he is. Tonight he shared this poem he wrote as an assignment on war. This is what he turned in. It has no title yet

War

Dark and Light, a tale of woe
Off to war, to battle we go
To bitter ends we march away
We fight to live another day

They’ve gone and slain the peaceful dove
Now we must fight for those we love
And though they plead and beg and cry
To protect our own we’ll gladly die

It is not grand to end a life
For all that brings is grief and strife
It stays with you both day and night
A horrid endless guilty blight

Dark and Light, I say adieu
But know my words, this song is true
For war is hell and blood is shed
Now off I go to join the dead