Day: November 13, 2007

I was setting up our Wii console so that Patches could play a video game when I found the message. It was a little memo that Link wrote for himself. It read “I like Bestfriend.” He wrote similar notes several days running. Link still misses Bestfriend even though they moved away more than a year ago. Looking at that note I thought about the long journey that Link has taken this past year. A year ago this month we chose to medicate Link for ADD. It was a decision we approached with great trepidation. It was, and continues to be the right decision for our family. Link flourishes. He is no longer constantly scolded for things undone. He has more confidence in himself and in his capabilities. He is catching up in so many of the social and emotional arenas where he lagged behind for so long. He is capable of examining his own emotions and working through them. It made me so glad to find this little memos. They are evidence to me that Link is acknowledging his emotions and dealing with them rather than avoiding them as he used to do. This is good.

Now I need to be making more space in my schedule to talk to Link about things. He needs quiet one-on-one conversation just as much as his noisier-pushier siblings do. I need to create quiet times where the two of us can talk. I’d like him to be able to turn to other people with his sadnesses as well as writing notes on a video game console. The more he connects with people here and now, the less he will miss Bestfriend who is gone. Link has grown so much and yet he still seems so much younger than his peers. I need to extend myself more to help bridge that gap.

Whether or not we are consciously aware of them, anniversaries are important. They carry emotional freight both good and bad. Last Sunday I passed an anniversary. It was one year ago that Howard and I decided to put Link on medication for ADD. The one year mark is a good time for me to pause and assess the results of that decision. It was not a decision we made lightly. I was frankly frightened. Even after the medication proved to be a great boon to Link, I worried about what the costs would be.

A year later Link is still on medication. It is hard for any of us to remember what it was like before. We’ve all adapted to the more focused Link and he has finally been able to learn some things that were beyond him before. He has learned them well enough that he is still able to do them when he is off the medication. The major side effects have been suppressed appetite and difficulty settling down to sleep. We make sure that he is off the medication every other weekend or to have a chance to sleep and eat lots. The doctor helps me monitor closely his health and development.

For Link continued medication is the right choice. He still has social, emotional, and some educational catch up to do. He probably will not completely catch up to his peers until he is adult. That is a typical developmental pattern for ADD brains. But I’m trying to minimize painful experiences as much as possible. I can’t take them all away. That wouldn’t be good for him either. We all need painful experiences so that we can grow from them. Right now he is struggling with recess. He keeps getting left out of games and being at loose ends. I’m trying to talk through that experience with him and help him find his own solutions. He also needs practice speaking. This means I need to be sitting down and having him read out loud to me. Not just that, I need to be talking to him about things. I need to be having conversations with him.