Coping with ADHD Diagnosis by Brandi Valentine

As a parent or guardian, when your child was first diagnosed with ADD/ADHD, what were some of the first thoughts that came to mind and also, at the time your child was first diagnosed, what help, service or information would you have benefited most from?

By Brandi Valentine

That is the question that I asked of my readers in a recent Weekly ADDition. I'm not a professional writer but I tried to compile as much of it as I could so that I could share it with you.

As I read through the responses, the same words kept re-appearing. RELIEF, HOPE, SADNESS, FRUSTRATION AND IGNORANCE. Those who have a child diagnosed as ADD/ADHD have experienced them all.

Relief in knowing that there was a reason for their childs behavior and relief in knowing that the reason was a medical one, and not a result of something the parents had control over or were responsible for. It wasn't their parenting skills, they were not bad parents, nor was it the fault of a mother who felt that they were somehow responsible or had done something during pregnancy that caused their child. to be this way. It also gave many parents relief by knowing that they were not alone. For some, it even gave them insight as to how they behaved when they were a child.

Here are just a few examples of what readers had to say.

" Thank Goodness we found the problem. I was feeling very hopeless, as if my child was unruly by choice"

" Relief that there was a name for the way that my 16 year old son was acting and that he was not the only experiencing this."

" Relief, that there maybe help for him and those who have to live with him and guilt because my eldest child inherited dyslexia from me, and now my youngest had inherited ADHD from me."

" When my son was first diagnosed with ADHD it was both a relief and a disappointment. Being my first child, it was a relief to hear that there was something wrong, a reason why he didn't learn like other children and disappointment for not having a "normal" child."

"When my son was first diagnosed with ADHD, the first feeling was relief. Until that point, most people in our lives were convinced that all of our son's problems could be attributed to ineffective parenting skills."

" I honestly thought it was my fault and that I could have changed the outcome if only I had done something".

Very few comments were made about how hard or how easy it was to get a diagnosis for their child but again, most of the readers seemed to agree on another issue and that was the lack of support they received once their child had been diagnosed.

(click here to continue reading)