Hope

Well I have been working on this blog post for quite some time. I have written it and deleted it several times out of fear. Fear of rejection. Fear of the backlash on Jeff and I…and even Peyton, our sweet 9 yr old boy this post is about. Fear that I won’t be able to write what I am really thinking so that people can understand and therefore justify our decision (even though our choices should only matter to us). Then I tell myself I’m being silly and it’s not really that big of a deal. Get a grip Tanya …it’s not really as big as you are making it. But you see, to me it IS! It has been life changing for this momma of 4 who always strives for perfection (to a fault), for our precious boy, and for our family as a whole.

Many know that Peyton has ADHD. Something that again, might not seem like that big of a deal to many, but when it disrupts every aspect of that child’s life as well as the lives of everyone else in the family, it is!

From the time he was 3 we knew something was definitely different. Like many parents out there, we lived in denial for so long. We kept thinking, he’s a boy, he will grow out it. He didn’t. When he was 5 we had him evaluated and even though they knew “something was wrong” they couldn’t quite put their finger on what it was.  “ADHD tendencies and sensory issues” was what they gave us. Needless to say we were left with more questions than answers. What does that mean? Will he outgrow it? Where do we go from here? Why won’t you provide him with services –just because you don’t have a definitive diagnosis? So again, we lived in denial and just dealt with it the best way we knew how.

How did that work? Not so well! We were left scrambling daily to figure out how to deal with this child that gave us a run for our money EVERYDAY, ALL DAY! We went back and forth between ourselves, “Can he control it?” “Is he just acting out?” “Do we just need to be stricter with him?” “Where did we go wrong?”. Feeling every step of the way that we were failing him somehow. We talked to lots of doctors and some believed, but many didn’t listen. They wouldn’t give me the time of day and just said he was being a boy or there was nothing that could be done until he started struggling in school. But what about how much he is struggling at home? What about the days filled with tears because I just couldn’t understand my child and didn’t know how to help him? I remember being filled with anger, frustration, annoyance, and exhaustion because I felt unheard and was made to feel like I was a crazy mom who just needed to provide more consequences for her child.

As the years went by and we added more children to our family and I became more and more stressed out trying to manage a newborn, a 1 yr old, a 2 yr old, and a 5.5 yr old with ADHD, I quickly realized that something had to change. We couldn’t go on living with what was the equivalent of 3 toddlers and a baby in the house. He needed help as much as we wanted him to get help. We tossed around lots of things with the pediatricians, got phone numbers for psychologists, went as far as emailing one of them, but just could never bring ourselves to follow through. Some may call me lazy or a bad mom, but I know God kept holding me back for a reason. He knew there was another answer out there and that these drs and the possibility of meds just wasn’t one of them.

As with anything there are varying degrees of ADHD and what that looks like for every child, but the gist of it is they are very impulsive, are the first to get excited and wound up, lack the ability to stay focused for periods of time to complete a task, get very upset when their routine is broken or things are out of place, can’t follow multi-step directions, and just plain lack self-control in a lot of areas of their life. This was Peyton to a “T”.

He was getting Needs Improvement on his behavior skills – self-control, follows directions, works independently, is respectful, isn’t disruptive, etc. We knew it was time to do something!

After much research into the same health supplements that were helping Jeff lose weight and become healthier, we started giving him a capful of our 22 super fruit juice and our mental focus and clarity supplement. In 6 months, he went from getting Needs Improvement to Outstandings! He learned how to pitch in baseball (something he would have never been able to do because it was too many things going on at one time), he can now follow multi-step directions, is under control of his actions, much calmer… He has won 2 school wide awards for showing respect and being a responsible student. It has been so fun to watch him blossom into the boy he is today!

It has been such a blessing not only to him, but to our family as well. We are ecstatic to have found something that is natural and still allows him to be Peyton! I share this with the hope that some other parent going through this same thing, can find hope and the answers they too are looking for!