Now some of you may be shaking your head that my kid was even on ritalin. But before you judge, we went through a lot before we decided to put him on ritalin. We tried really hard (on our own) to change his diet, to teach him breathing exercises, we blamed ourselves, we got frustrated, we cried and finally we went to our dr for help. He agreed that T has adhd. While some of you may feel like ADHD is a disorder made up by the medical industry, I respectfully disagree. My son has ADHD. I'm not going to lay out all the things that lead me to believe this, because it only makes me feel like I am pointing out things I don't like about his behavior. But I will tell you that I full believe he has this brain disorder.
Now that I have that out of the way, about a month ago we started looking for a better way. Everytime Tristan started to get wound up I found myself asking him "if he took his meds." I realized that I was defining him by his disorder and letting the ritalin parent for me. I am better than this. John is better than this. We are the parents and we wanted to do better for him. So after a lot of prayer, we stopped giving him the ritalin. He took 5 mg every 4 hours (it was super short lasting, like a spot treater. Not the kind that has to get and stay in your blood stream to work.).
I'm going to be honest, I was drunk by noon the first day we took him off of it. Not really, but it was not pretty. I found myself dumbfounded by some of the decisions he was making; hitting his sister, running into walls, banging his head on the couch, jumping in his baby brother's crib, screaming at any disturbance etc. It was a taxing day. The second day he was off of the ritalin, he was home with my folks while I was working at an event with my boss. I found myself crying in the bathroom after talking with my dad who informed me that Tristan was not controllable and couldn't even get a whole thought out. I was sure I had just made a horrible mistake.
We are now on day 6 of NO ritalin. We are working on breathing exercises, we have a code word (evil knivel, lol) if he needs reminding to slow down and breathe and mama and dad are remembering every time he makes a random, seemingly thoughtless decision that we need not get mad, we just need to remind him that is not the appropriate decision to make. He is not a vengeful child, not one to do things to make you mad, so when he makes poor decisions we are just reminding him of the better options. Actually, in the last 6 days I have found that he is a much more resourceful, creative kid than we have allowed him to be. He's pretty darn great.
Working with our nutritionist, Selena Moffitt (www.SelenaMaestas.com) helps a lot, she has worked very closely with us to remove dairy and soon gluten from our diets to help with T's ADHD, though I feel it will be a good thing for all of us.
We have also begun an ADHD protocol with Young Living Essential Oils. I mixed up the below oils and we rub it on his wrists in the morning, afternoon and night. A bonus is that is smells amazing and covers up that "boy" smell! ha! I have found that this protocol with Young Living is an amazing and very natural addition to the other changes we are making. It has really made a difference. If you want more info please email me at dirtjumpingfamily@gmail.com.
We have a ways to go before he feels in total control. But he is 8 and we are the parents. He deserves us to work as hard as we can on his behalf. So we will try. Really hard. In the meantime I am learning the definition of grace. I will keep you posted but as of day 6, we are all alive and I think we are seeing the brighter side of life with essential oils and without ritalin. (www.youngliving.org/amykayhardesty)
