I want to give up

[Jkodman]

I have been "lurking" here for quite a while. But I need to vent and some support. My DS is 10 & was diagnosised with ADHD in 1st grade. We started hs in 2nd grade up til now (5th grade). He has difficult side effects with stimulant rx and we just started Strattera last week. But he is out of control, he can't focus and is like a rubber ball off the walls. We are in the process of getting psychological testing to find out why the road blocks in his learning. He is on a 3rd grade level for math and his reading is ok. But he has such a negative attitude about school - everytime we sit down to work it ends in arguments. And I mean everytime. He is so negative, moody and argumentative. How can I school a child that won't listen, hates school & fights me on everything!! I am exhausted and feel guilty b/c things slide because he doesn't learn anything. I pray this testing sheds some light. Maybe b/c of anger and personalities he just can't learn from me. Any suggestions? :crying:

[justamouse]

Buy this book.

http://www.amazon.com/Teaching-Heart-Cherishing-Challenging-Christian/dp/0784713472/ref=sr_1_4?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1253741122&sr=8-4

Teaching with Heart, by Jody Capeheart. It is amazing. And, in all honesty, I wouldn't try to accomplish much until his meds are squared away. If he's that bad right now, just do what you can-don't force anything. They are SUPER smart kids, you won't hold him back, I promise. Let him get his feet under him and he'll catch up in no time.

If I had to do it all over again, too, I would supplement with fish oil and vitamin D in addition to meds. (I did, but not nearly enough). My son (19 now) still says that when he remembers to take his fish oil it helps him a ton.

((hugs)) It's exhausting. Please, don't lose yourself in the process and take care of you and your DH and your relationship, too. :grouphug::grouphug:

[cin]

:grouphug:

[Jkodman]

Thanks so much for the encouraging words. It would relieve some pressure to just work on the basics for now until we get this resolved.

[Ottakee]

Have the doctors considered something other than ADHD for him or something in addition to it?

His problems with meds for ADHD, being very moody, negative, etc. could mean that there is something else going on.

I have 2 with bipolar and I TOTALLY understand what you are going through.

[Jkodman]

Thanks for the feedback. We are currently going through psychological testing. I hope she will be able to give us an idea of what else is going on. I just don't understand his feelings toward school work, he truly dislikes everything and is so resistent to me. I wonder if he needs to be taught by someone other than myself. There is always such a power struggle.

[Dobela]

Thanks for the feedback. We are currently going through psychological testing. I hope she will be able to give us an idea of what else is going on. I just don't understand his feelings toward school work, he truly dislikes everything and is so resistent to me. I wonder if he needs to be taught by someone other than myself. There is always such a power struggle. I agree that there may be something else going on. Have you ever asked any direct qurestions of your son asking him why x is so hard or why he dislikes this subject so much? My ds is 9 and after I got him past "I don't know" as his reply, and let him know I wasn't going to yell at him for the truth, he was able to start expressing where he was having problems. His insight really opened the doors for me and led me to what the real problems were. Too many times he used his anger/frustration as a distraction and I used punishment when I shouldn't have because I didn't understand what was really happening. It still has been a tough year, but finally I feel we are making progress.

Right now money is a great motivator for my son. He gets $1 in dimes each school day. Every time he has an outburst he has to give me a dime. Everytime he argues, refuses to do an assignment, and so on, he has to give me a dime. In the past it has been activities like homeschool co-op or 4wheeling with his grandpa that he has to earn.

As you are looking to testing, ask for referrals for OT and speech. He may be having processing or sensory issues that are helping trigger the emotional outbursts. For my son it seems the lack of focus was in part due to undiagnosed vision problems. He had 20/20 vision but what I didn't know before I saw a behavioral optometrist was that he was having extreme difficulty tracking, had poor depth and poor convergrence. Just today someone mentioned how much calmer and focused he was in Bible class and I really credit vision therapy with that. Before we started training his eyes he thought the whole world jumped around and trying to focus was painful. www.covd.org (http://www.covd.org) is where I began looking for vision problems and solutions. It has changed our world for the better.

Now, I also want to say that sometimes it is best for someone else to teach your child. This year we also hired a reading tutor to teach our son reading. It is expensive and stretches our budget considerably. But as a subject, it really was the most stressful subject of the day. I dreaded it, he dreaded it and we both began avoiding it. Now that I am his homework assistant and his cheerleader, our relationship has improved a great deal. As we look forward to next year, I hope to be taching all subjects again, but I won't hesitate hiring out a subject or 2 if we need to for sanity sake.

In the meantime, hang in there. I know how tough it is. My dh would come home to me in tears every night. You will make it thru this and eevryone will be better because of it.
:grouphug:

[robsiew]

I don't have any advice, but wanted to give you a :grouphug:. I have a son with similar issues, although we're just starting down the road of diagnosis. He's only 5, but seems to hate school (how can you hate something you've just started?). Being that he's younger, I don't have any advice to give you. I think you're on the right track to finding whatever else is going on! Hang in there! I would ditto the fish oil! Rylan has gagging issues so he can't swallow a pill, but our chiropractor sells lemon flavored fish oil that we put in juice for him. He gobbles it up. This is one very important (easy) thing you can do for them.