ADHD has an image problem.

No, hear me out. It's not a physically debilitating condition. People who have it don't look as though there's anything wrong with them. There's no cure for it. It's just a thing you learn to live with, more or less successfully, or you don't.

You can't hold rallies for this. You can't build a walkathon around it. There are no rubber bracelets to wear and no bumper stickers for your car. It's almost a thing you're embarrassed to speak publicly about, because so many people are convinced it isn't real.

So where does that leave ADHDers? Stuck with a mental disorder they have to act like they don't have, if they want to be able to function in the society at large. Where does that leave parents of ADHDers? Unnaturally focused on school accommodations and obsessing over whether their child is alienating potential friends.

I'm not even sure how you could change the image problem, short of talking about ADHD a lot more, to everyone, to change people's perceptions. Which I already kind of do, since I make no secret of kiddo's condition. But there isn't much point in, say, a fundraiser. Who would you give the money to? The makers of Ritalin or Vyvanse? CHADD, maybe, but I'm a little bothered by the fact that they take money from drug companies. I know they're a well-intentioned group with some nice resources on their website, but ... I feel like a non-profit group ought to be funded by its members.

Look, I'm happy to be a one-person outreach program on ADHD but I feel like there ought to be some sort of ... something else. Some sort of larger movement, some sort of attempt to achieve a greater understanding. So that we're not all stuck in this permanent defensive pose. "My child has ADHD. Yes, it's a real disorder. No, it's not made up to excuse my lousy parenting. No, I'm not a lousy parent for medicating/not medicating my child. Yes, my child is entitled to extra time on classwork/preferential seating/fidget toys at his desk/occupational therapy. No, that does not give him an unfair advantage over his classmates. Yes, it is possible for him to to be smart and also have ADHD. And no, I don't feed my kid too much sugar. Thanks for playing."

As I type this (with an overtired kiddette curled into my shoulder), kiddo is building the latest in an endless series of elaborate Lego vehicles. The space shuttle didn't work out, apparently, so now he's trying a carnival truck. (Whatever that is.) He's so amazingly creative. But he's a square peg -- or possibly a trapezoid -- surrounded by round holes. He's never going to do well if people try to change him to fit the world around him.

Therefore, the world needs to change to fit him.

The status of things

Whatever bout of insanity convinced us to host Passover, Easter and kiddo's birthday party all in the same weekend has now passed, and should that same urge ever appear again, I will beat it with a stick. One event per weekend from now on, period.

I do suspect the general craziness in the air around here infected kiddo a little bit, because calling him "oppositional" lately would be like suggesting a hurricane was a little wet. He throws Defcon 1 fits over being asked to go potty. He runs off instead of washing his hands for dinner. If you pick him up and bring him over to where he needs to be, he kicks. If you (quite justifiably) send him to his room so he can cool off enough to even begin serving his time out, he throws things at his bedroom door. Thunk thunk thunk.

Last night he goofed around instead of eating dinner and then threw a fit because I wouldn't let him have leftover birthday cake. This morning he and DH got into a huge argument because he wouldn't put his shoes on to go to school. Yes, this is as maddening as it sounds. I finally walked over, sat him on the couch and put the shoes on myself, because no one has time for this crap, and it did seem to defuse things.

The one saving grace of all this is that at least when other family members see what he's really like on bad days, they understand what we're up against. (Or they say, "My parents would never have put up with this," implying, I guess, that we're lousy parents. Ah well.)

Tonight was calmer at least. He did his homework, washed hands for dinner without too much prompting, ate -- well, sort of ate. Not enough to justify dessert, but he got over that. He told us a long, involved story about the scary freezing girl and the guitar that made everyone in the town freeze, and how he broke the guitar and made the girl cry. (I blame the Fresh Beat Band. Also, I miss Phineas and Ferb.) He practiced writing, got ready for bed, and only lost one of his two-book allotment for taking too long.

The timer on my phone is a wonderful thing. My readings indicate that ADHD kids (and adults) have no sense of time, which is why they're always dawdling and getting unfocused and running late and holding people up. So the past couple days, I've been trying to get kiddo acquainted with the concept. I tell him he's got three minutes to do X, set the timer, hold it up and wait. If he doesn't make it, he suffers a consequence.

We did our insurance-approved five sessions with the behavioral therapist and she was under the impression we wouldn't be back afterward, though we weren't thinking things would be solved in five sessions. She's had some good suggestions -- cut down on the toys in his room, thus cutting down on potential distractions; let him pick out part or all of his outfit for the day; try to emphasize positive reinforcement over negative. But mainly her point was, it's on us to manage his behaviors so we see improvement long-term.

She actually went on a bit of a rant toward the end of the last session. We started off talking about how you see small kids walking around with iPhones or iPods or iWhatevers, and morphed into Grown-Up Kids These Days and how their parents indulge them their whole lives and buy them whatever they want and never teach them how to work for anything, and then these kids get to college or get out of college and don't know how to function because, um, they've never worked for anything, and then the parents call her to fix the problem when it's probably past fixing. She said somewhere along the way, between the last generation or two of parents and now, people forgot how to parent effectively.

What's most interesting about that curmudgeonly-sounding rant is that the therapist is probably even younger than I am.

At any rate, we're figuring on bringing kiddo back to her periodically for support and reasurance, and someone to bitch to, so we're going next week.

We finally -- finally -- hallelujah got our insurance to cover occupational therapy; there was literally no one in the state on our insurance plan, so we got clearance for the center to be treated as in-network. Your timeline, folks: He was diagnosed in February, and he's starting sessions in April. I think the Titanic iceberg moved faster than this.

But we took him to the center for an initial evaluation, which he loved, because of the big rope swing and all the giant cushiony things to climb on and the big hammock to slide down. (I thought it looked a little fun myself.) We still have to conference on the full report, but on-the-spot judgment was, he's got some gaps in his physical development, and those gaps are making him, subconsciously, not trust his own body, and so part of how he deals with that is lashing out physically.

So I'm hoping between those two specialists, we'll at least get some more detailed answers.

Stress and tantrums

So I hit the garage door with my car the other day. That may not be the most embarrassing thing I've ever done in my life (riding halfway down a hill on my friend's bike before realizing I didn't know where the brakes were -- that still wins), but it's at least top five. As they say on "Thomas the Tank Engine," "Luckily, no one was hurt." Except, you know, the garage door. A little bit.

It had been, let's say, not the best week. Work stress. Kiddo stress. Hearing nothing from the OT's office. Feeling like I was getting funny looks from people every single time I brought him out in public and he ran around, or acted up, or blatantly blew off something I said to him, or got in some kid's face. I've been thinking I should have a T-shirt made that says, "I'm Not a Rotten Little Brat, I Have ADHD" and that way I can just point to the T-shirt and shrug.

Which is a stupid idea, of course. That's way too long to fit on a T-shirt.

On top of it all, I was exhausted for some reason -- neither caffeine nor Snickers bars were waking me up. So on the morning of kiddo's next therapy session, I got him into the car, told DH I'd see him there, backed the car up and smack hit the closed door.

This, obviously, caused confusion and delay. As in, we were way late for the appointment. But the therapist to her credit was unruffled, and did as much with us as she could in the time she had.

She did have a good suggestion for the running in the parking lot: Give him something to hang on to that clips on to DH's belt, something he'd want to hold on to, so that he'll walk next to DH. Like a voluntary leash, so to speak. I went through an entire toy store and this is what I came up with:

Isn't he just the cutest little Wookiee you ever saw? (Hey, it was either Chewie, Darth Vader, Darth Maul or Yoda. And kiddo would've found all of the others scary. Including Yoda, who he still doesn't believe is a good guy. Geek fail.) And yes, he does the Wookiee growl.

Kiddo and I tested Chewie out over the weekend, as we went to the movies ("Arrietty," liked it), to the playground and to various stores. It works more often than not, although occasionally I had to remind kiddo to keep holding Chewie. I'm sure this looks a little ridiculous, but so does running after him yelling "Get back here now!"

We've continued doing time outs in the chair in the dining room, although we had to switch corners, since he decided it would be fun to hit the framed Ansel Adams print on the wall next to him. I had visions of glass everywhere. A couple of times, he's gotten so worked up he's flat out refused to even sit on the chair, at which point I haul him up to his room so he can cool off, then bring him back down for a time out. I did that today, after he'd whacked his sister in the back of the head with a Nerf football, and then when I went upstairs to retrieve him, I found him on the floor, nestled in the blankets from his bed, sound asleep. I guess the time change wasn't easy on him.

Because that had only been the latest in a long line of tantrums today. He threw a fit this morning when I made him use the bathroom before getting dressed, instead of after breakfast. He threw another fit when I made eggs for breakfast. He threw another one when I told them TV time was over.

I've learned the thing to do when he throws a fit is to wait him out. When he stood in the bathroom sulking, furiously declaring "I am NOT going potty, I am NOT," I said, "OK, then I guess we'll just keep standing here." And after a few minutes, he did his business.

When he utterly flipped out about the idea of eggs -- "I don't like eggs, they're not good for me, I am NOT eating eggs, I am NOT, I am NOT" -- I shrugged and said, "OK, kiddette and I will eat them. But you have to try them before I make you cereal."

"Nooo! I am NOT."

"Uh-huh." I continued scrambling the eggs.

"I want cereal!"

"Well, you're going to have to wait until I make the eggs."

"I am NOT eating eggs!"

"Hey, remember the man in 'Green Eggs and Ham' and how he didn't want eggs, but then he tried them and he liked them?"

"Yes ..."

"Well, maybe if you try the eggs, you'll like them."

"I am NOT!"

"Uh-huh."

So I put the eggs down in front of kiddette, who immediately started to inhale them (bless her, she eats everything except falafel and mushrooms), and kiddo, who stared at them in utter despair. And then he sadly picked up his fork and ate some. He paused. "I like it," he said grumpily. "Can I have more?"

Yeah, Dr. Seuss and I have your number, kid.

So I can handle one or two of those scenes a day. But some days there are more than that, and then my patience runs out. I'd love to know how other people stay patient through all this, and is the secret martinis?

Anyway, the important thing is, the garage door is only a little dented on the inside, and now we have Chewie to guide us. So maybe things will be better this week.

An un-diagnostic diagnosis

So after I last posted about kiddo maybe/possibly/who knows? having ADHD, I heard from my cousin down South (who very nicely gave the OK on being mentioned here). Her son, a little older than my son, does have ADHD and has been in occupational therapy for a few years now. And some of the things she described seeing sounded extremely familiar.

And then we had our first "parent-teacher conference" at the new school. And they -- nicely, supportively -- said kiddo was behind where he should be, especially with fine motor skills and with listening/paying attention. I asked about ADHD, figuring they wouldn't bring it up unless I did first. Turns out the director's son has ADHD. "A lot of the things my son did," she said, "I see in your son."

She suggested avoiding red dye and severely limiting soda. Which raised two questions: Were we even giving him any red dye-ish foods now? And who the hell gives a 4-year-old kid soda? We don't even give him that much juice -- he uses a water bottle at school. Thankfully kiddo's teacher noted that he seems to eat a lot of healthy foods as it is. Which he does -- lots of fruit, whole wheat everything, cheese sticks, sunflower seed butter, carrots and hummus.

Conversations like this are what make me think all other parents are raising their kids on Dr. Pepper and Pop-Tarts.

Anyway they said they'd work with an OT if we needed one to come to the school for sessions. And they said whatever disciplinary method we use at home, they'd use as well for consistency. So that was nice. Certainly more than the other school offered. Of course, the other school also didn't bother to flag us about his handwriting, possibly because everyone was quitting for better jobs at that point.

We took him to the pediatrician to get a referral for evaluation. And she agreed, after watching him for a few minutes, that he was definitely showing signs of hyperactivity. Mostly because he was bouncing off the walls of the examining room like he was the ball in a pinball game. She said ADHD frequently shows up along with something else, like autism, but she didn't see any sign of that, since he was peppering her with a million questions about the decorations on the walls and came over twice to give her a hug. She also said most 4-year-olds wouldn't think to ask so many questions about something, and that he's a pretty smart kid.

I actually think that's the frustrating thing: That he can be so fantastic and so completely exasperating at the same time, literally at the same second. That he really likes to go, say, food shopping with me, but while food shopping, will demand to hold the bananas -- wait, just one banana -- no, two bananas -- no, not those two bananas -- no, wait, the cranberries -- no, the mini bagels -- no, the bananas! And then will pretend the banana is a phone and walk down the aisle chatting into it. (OK, I admit this was pretty funny. People were walking by us and giggling.)

Per UMDNJ and a bunch of other places, here are the symptoms of ADHD:

• Get distracted easily and forget things often
• Switch too quickly from one activity to the next
• Have trouble with directions
• Daydream too much
• Have trouble finishing tasks like homework or chores
• Lose toys, books, and school supplies often
• Fidget and squirm a lot
• Talk nonstop and interrupt people
• Run around a lot
• Touch and play with everything they see
• Be very impatient
• Blurt out inappropriate comments
• Have trouble controlling their emotions

The red flag is if you see at least six of these. I count between seven and eight, depending on the day.

So we have a call out to the child development center at the hospital, but of course not expecting to hear back until after Thanksgiving. My therapist says some of the tests they would use, he just isn't old enough for. So we could go through all this and still not get a clear diagnosis until after he's 5. I'm thinking the best course of action is to proceed as though he does have it, and keep things very structured for him, and see what we can do about the handwriting. At least until we hear something different.

Last year it was his eyes -- literally, the surgery was a year ago -- this year, it's his mental development. Can't wait to see what I need to freak out about next year.