I have been talking about starting a blog like this for a while now.  Through 16 years in education and 5 years as a parent with a son recently diagnosed with ADHD, I have been doing a ton of reading, talking, sharing stories, questioning and pulling my hair out at times!  As this is my first post in my new blog I will start off by sharing a bit about myself and my family.

I am a mom to two beautiful kids, a daughter, El who is 7 and entering grade 3 and a son, JP, who is 5 and entering grade 1 (not their real names!).  Both of them were born in the Fall and have late birthdays, which makes them the youngest in their classes. I am also a Principal at an inner city school in a very large school district.  Throughout my years as a teacher and administrator of elementary school age children, I have had many challenging students, who taught me a lot about myself as a teacher and about how different each child could be, even when they have a similar ‘diagnosis’.

When I became a mom this was both a blessing and a curse because I watched my kids like a hawk and constantly wondered if there was something going on for them. El was a very quiet baby and would often lay in her bassinet and stare at the ceiling and rarely cried and JP was a busy baby, always on the move, never sitting still and exploring his world.  They couldn’t be more different.

I think the first real insight into the energy, perseverance, bravery and risk taking that JP would demonstrate on a daily basis was when JP was 11 months.  He could not yet walk and had only climbed up to our landing, which was two steps, and one day he was missing off the main floor.  He somehow managed, in a very short period of time, to get himself up 12 stairs, into the bathroom, into the bathroom sink and was happily sitting there and turning the water off and on. I have no idea how he did that, the shear arm and ab strength it must have taken to accomplish this feat, but somewhere he did.  Now that he is older and we see he is basically Spider-Man and climbs everything in sight, it is not surprising.  This started years of questioning about JP: Is he just a busy, active boy? Does he have ADHD? How do we know?  Where is the line between energetic explorer and ADHD?

With my school background and experience I was lucky to have an understanding of the process and what we needed to do to determine if there was something else going on for JP, so we talked to our family doctor and got a referral to a paediatrician.  The next few years we learned more about JP, tried various parenting strategies, and waited until Kindergarten to see how the school environment would impact him.  Diagnosis of ADHD is typically not done before age 7, so we knew we needed to wait and see how he developed.  No need to jump into a diagnosis too soon and we wanted to give him every opportunity to develop and learn.

This blog is going to be about the process that we went through, the crazy experiences that we have had these past few years, the diagnosis process and steps we took, where  we are now and the learning along the way.  As as school Principal I have shared my personal experiences with some of the parents in the school and it seems to have helped families who are going through similar experiences.  Many parents ask the same questions: ‘Is my child’s behaviour really that different from other kids?’, ‘Is this my fault?’, ‘What am I doing wrong as a parent?’ and many other questions and I hope that by talking about my experiences it helps in some way.

I always thought that my background in education, Masters in Psychology specializing in working with children with exceptionalities and years of experience working with kids, would be a great asset when I became a parent, but being a parent is hard!  I struggle daily and ask myself those same questions. I hope that sharing my experiences as an educator and a parent of a son with ADHD will help me pull together all of the ideas, stories, information and questions I have swirling around in my head and possibly help someone else long the way.  I hope over time this blog will be a place where others can share their experiences as well and we can all learn from each other. The big question now is if I will actually have the time to write the blog amongst the craziness of my life!

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