i gave my mom info, but she refuses to believes, she said you can't get good grades with ADD. she believes i'm being a making it up as an act but i'm not. any ideas

Lara,

How are things going with you and your mom?

i gave her info but she refused to look at it. so i go to the docter for a regular check up first week in aug. so i'm going to ask.

many parents are in denial and think it reflects on them like my dad didn't want to admit to it until he had too pretty much
brittany

my mother was in denial for the longest time. i was originally going to the neurologist because i suffer from a lot of headaches, so i mentioned my concerns to the doctor myself. he did tests and what do you know? i have ADD. there is really no harm in just asking. what you do about it afterwards is something that you and your family need to discuss with open minds.

I went through all of this too when I was younger. I really suggest that you force your parents to open up their eyes to the facts. I know its difficult but I think if I would have told my parents more about whats going on in my head they would have been a little more helpful. Well I had to hide the fact from my father because he would have been very upset about the fact that someone has labled and medicated me. Although he's kind of a hypocrite being that he takes whatever new fad vitamin he can get his hands on. Or he used to anyways until he learned that natural substances are just as harmful as artificial one. My mom is an LD teacher and I think she has known all along since I was very little but has been in denial of the fact that I have ADD. She never taught me how to deal with things correctly she just tried to control me. We used to sit at the kitchen table for hours at a time trying to complete my school work. It was so miserable because she had to force me to pay attention and she just didn't want to believe that I was incapable. I haven't yet expressed my feelings to her. I don't know if any of her students have ADD but I would really like for her to know more about it first hand from her own daughter what it was like to try to pay attention. When my brother was younger he was diagnosed and my father denied to give him medication or any type of counseling or therapy. So I guess my parents deny the fact that my brother or I have ADD and would rather just believe that we were horrible inpulsive hyper little brats.

My parents did the same thing, lucky for me, my college had a counsilor who treated ADHD patients. He was the one who first suggested to me, but didn't give me meds, more like stratagies for daily life and studies. Thanks you Dr. Fishler :)

hey i'm new here, and my parents don't think i have add but i took this online test on the amen clinic site and it says:
add inattentive type highly probable
basal ganglia hyperactivity highly probable and there was ajnother one but i cannot remember what it was, it was the one underneath the add inattentive thing. i tok another test aswell and it said i got 17/20. they still won't believe me

sam

Hmmmm..... Thats a difficult one for me. My parrents were happy to accept that I had ADD and get some meds for me. My ADD showed through my schoolwork (or the lack there of). I could only focus on computers. I'm not sure what it is that makes you think you have ADD, but for me its doing school work. My parents were happy to get me diagnosed because they were tired of fighting with me every day trying to get me to do homework. If you have problem like that that bugs them, use that against them. Thats all I can think of.

well i had no problems with 'school grades ' but i definately had problems with school work, and al ot of my report cards said 'sophie would do better if she asked for help when needed' or 'sophie would do better if she paid attention'.
and i always had difficulties in school, which werent really picked up on by my mum. (i also had some bad teachers when i started school, and didnt have a good teacher who understood me until year 4, year 5, and then my year 6 teachers were absolutely stupid, and i also had just moved schools, and their comment was "she's not socializing well with the other students" - mum put that down to i'd just moved, well that was obviously only one thing - i had majo social problems always)

i cant get thehelp i need right now because i know mum wont understand or believe. she doesnt belive in add (ive never tried to talk to her about it), she never takes me seriously, never listens, and doenst believe in seeing doctors or consellors or anything like that.

I'll chime in with my 2 cents as well. Being a parent with ADD and knowing that my wife, who instigated my treatment for ADD, doesn't want to even talk about the possibility that any of our 3 kids could have ADD.
The oldest is on HIGH honor roll. The middle child is reading very well at age 6.
What you have for grades is not criteria for diagnosing ADD/ADHD.
Ask your doctor for sure!
Go to www.brainplace.com and take their 100 question survey first(It is a good starting point to see if you exhibit enough ADHD behaviors for one of the 5 types to be probable or not). Take that info with you when you talk to your doctor.

i cant find the survey on brainplace.com

my mum won't accept it either. because i'm not hyper, talking a lot (opposite..well kinda hyper/imatient) and i did good in school... she says she knows what it is and i don't have it. the thing is she doesn't and i don't really care.... once i get my health card im making an appointment.
p.s- i'm 19 and act way younger. its annoying and i can't help it.

Welcome to the ADD Forum, so_impatient! Glad to have you here!

It's difficult when a parent won't accept something about you.

I have to go, but I will write more of a response later tonight.

I just wanted to welcome you to the forum and acknowledge your post :)

Ps. you're not annoying, so_impatient!

It was nice talking with you in chat tonight, Courteny!

If you decide you want to talk with your mom more about ADD, let me know, I have some suggestions.

Otherwise - hang in there. Check out the Canada section -
http://www.addforums.com/forums/forumdisplay.php?f=97

Make an appointment to see a psychiatrist to get diagnosed. Then take it step by step from there.

Best wishes!

My parents didnt believe either.instead I was put in two diffrent institutions which of coure were the scariest thing Ive ever experienced still to this day.Hang in there,dont take no for a answer.Its your future that your fighting for.Talk to someone in school like a councilor or something.Im not saying forget your mom but apparently shes not ready to face what you feel yet.She may be scared.How old is your mom?In some views A.D.D is a weakness.I discovered that alot of parents arent educated on it.They still think its a mental disability.Hang in there sweetie,its gonna be okay.You sound very smart and in touch with your feelings.

I am a freshman in high school and have straight A's. I can't pay attention to anything that is not physically active. If people start talking my mind just goes somewhere else and a lot of people get really mad when they think that I am just ignoring them. I tried talking to my mom, but she just said that paying attention was a learned skill and if I had ADD my grades would be terrible. I really need help for school because it takes me about 3 hours to do my math homework because I can never pay attention and I only ever have to do
15-20 problems which is always my shortest homework.

i gave my mom info, but she refuses to believes, she said you can't get good grades with ADD. she believes i'm being a making it up as an act but i'm not. any ideas

I'm really sorry about this. ADHD is hard enough, but when you don't have the support of someone close to you that's even tougher.

Believe it or not, it may not have anything to do with you. And I don't think it's a question of giving more information.

I really strongly urge you to get support from another adult that you trust. But you know yourself, and you know that ADHD is real. Sometimes the proof will be in the pudding. Once you start getting better grades, maybe she will be more supportive of you.

Good luck!

well if i was running around ANNOYING my parents then they'd probably be bothered to take me down and get me tested for it but hey since im not that must mean im...just lazy!

Since this is an older thread im gonna send this note to johnny123. Talk to a counselor at school when you return if you cant get your folks to believe...

the whole add inattentive thing is difficult to pick up if you are functional getting decent grades and not impusive..But us invisible adders suffer a lot of unecessary pain we have to be our own best advocate but it sure helps to have a doctor nurse or counselor on our side when addressing this with the parents...
goodluck all of you young uns
katts

I know this is an old post, but I find my story may help some of the people on this board. I was diagnosed at 19, right after my freshman year of college. I went into my therapist, whom I had been seeing off an on a couple of years, mainly due to the fact that I knew I was severely depressed. I had hard times with my parents throughout highschool, earned myself an almost non-existant GPA in my first 2 semesters of college, my parents told me they were getting a divorce maybe a month after I moved into my dorm about 2 hours away from home, and on top of that, both of my grandparents died within 6 months of each other.

Needless to say, I didn't feel I could deal with the depression on my own anymore... I was self-medicating with various substances, and saw no way out. I went into my therapist and asked to get a referral to see the in office psychiatrist to prescribe me an antidepressant.

After the hour of explaining why I felt I needed to be on an antidepressant, mainly my grades, constant 'chatter' in my mind, crying, etc. she made an appointment to see the psychiatrist, but she also said she was almost positive I have a rather strong case of ADHD combined type, anxiety, as well as depression. wow

When I went home, I googled some information on ADHD and it all became clear to me, crystal clear. I constantly got the "Rob does not work to his full potential" "I know he can do it, if he just puts his mind to it" etc. I made good grades, if I enjoyed the subject. If I want to learn something, I WILL learn it! Things I find interesting, I know in great detail. But things I wasn't interested in, no matter how hard I tried, I couldn't do it. I would have to read the same page of a text book 5 or 6 times, because I would be reading the page, but I would also be thinking of so many other things that it was like I wasn't reading at all. Anyways, sorry that just got really off topic, but that's my background.

NOW TO THE REAL TOPIC:
When I went home and told my mom about my diagnosis, and medication combo I was on.... it didn't go over well. She said adhd is a made up illness, and if I just tried harder I would succeed, and a number of other things. Then, once she found out how often adderall was abused on college campuses, she went nuts. I was over 18 at the time, so she couldn't actually tell me or my doctor to not prescribe the medication since it was deemed medically necessary, but she tried her hardest. She finally got her wish when she called my psychiatrist office, which she also goes to, and told them I was abusing my medication! If I was, in fact, abusing my medication, I would thank her for intervening, but making that up is not right. I never abused my medication, and would have brought in my pill bottles to prove it, they could have gladly counted the pills and seen that I was taking it as prescribed, but they believed her and discontinued my stimulant therapy.

I finally got fed up with the disrespect I received from my doctor, who obviously believed my mother, I changed to a different psychiatrist and all is fine again.

One more thing that is rather odd, I went to my mothers house the other day, and on her table was a pharmacy receipt for a daily dose of vyvanse.... Her and my father are clearly ADHD, which is probably why my mom blew off my diagnosis in the first place. Not only was she admitting I may have a learning disorder, but also she knew she did too but didn't want to accept it. Now she sees how much stimulant medication helps her, and although she would never humble herself enough to tell me shes diagnosed and also takes stimulants, I just think about it and grin. It's just so weird that she told me I had and was being treated for a made up disability and gave me so much trouble for it, and over time she decided she would go get diagnosed and treated herself.

Sorry this was so long, but I thought it might possibly help someone. I went through hell with my diagnosis, even to the point of my mother lying to my doctor so she would stop treatment, but everything worked out in the end. Recommend your parents to read, as well as read yourself, 'Driven to Distraction' and 'Delivered from Distraction'. They are both GREATTTT books, and I recommend anyone with adhd, or anyone with a loved one with adhd, should definitely read.

goodluck all