A quick retreat update: I’ve lowered the cost of the September 10–13 Silent Retreat to $999 and added a beautiful sound bath experience with a new practitioner. We’ll also have forest bathing, mindful movement, and nourishing Mediterranean-inspired meals prepared by our cook, who is also a therapist and will be present throughout the retreat. There will be plenty of time in nature and- most importantly- lots of spacious silence, with opportunities to talk ;) about how the experience is unfolding. A few spots remain, and registration closes September 1.
Our family came to the decision to try medication for ADHD for one of my kiddos.
This decision has not come lightly.
I have heard many wonderful stories about how helpful these medications can be for kids with ADHD. But I’m also making this decision from the outside. I don’t actually know what it feels like to have ADHD.
I am certainly someone who can focus with pretty good intention. I experience the scattered attention that seems to come with becoming a mother: lots of voices demanding different things at different times; combined with the culture we’re all swimming in, constantly pulling our attention in a million directions…
But that isn’t ADHD. And I don’t know what it is like to live in my son’s body. I don’t know what school feels like through his eyes. I don’t know how hard he is working to direct his attention or filter out everything competing for it.
And that matters.
One of the reasons we ultimately came to this decision, in collaboration with his doctor and his dyslexia tutor, is that school is getting a little more demanding, and middle school isn’t too far away. It seemed like there might be value in trying this before another layer of academic and organizational demands falls upon him.
I also appreciate that ADHD medications don’t have to represent some enormous forever-decision. We can try something, pay attention, work with his doctor, and decide whether it is helping.
Before starting, we talked with his doctor about some of the things we should pay attention to.
How hungry is he?
Does he feel focused?
Does he feel like himself?
Is he more irritable as the medication wears off?
Does he feel tired or wired at bedtime?
These sound like relatively simple questions. And I trust that my son knows his own body better than anyone else. I just wanted to give him a simple way to pause and notice what he was experiencing and give us a way to look at those experiences together over time.
So I started thinking about how we could make some of this a little easier to notice.
Not just for me. For him.
I created a simple check-in sheet that we’re going to use for a few days before he starts medication and then continue once he begins. My hope is that having something visual will help us see patterns that might otherwise get lost in casual conversations or in my own recollection of how the day went.
Because memory is messy.
“I don’t think you ate much today.”
“You seemed really irritable after school.”
“Were you hungry at lunch yesterday?”
Those observations might be useful, but they’re also filtered through me.
I’d rather give him some language and a little practice noticing for himself.
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