Patrice, first off WELCOME!!! You will find LOTS of help and support here. we are NOT doctors or nurses or therapists. We ARE parents just like you who just want to give our children the tools they need to survive. we have been right where you are. or we are there now.
Now comes my warning: This will probably be a long reply. I am terribly wordy, but I have good info! Of course you need to take what will work for you and ignore the rest.
Get RID of that therapist (therapist). She is WORSE than useless. Who has any idea what kind of garbage she has filled your difficult child (Gift from God - the child who brought you here) with, esp with the "no adhd" pile of doodoo she plopped on you. ADHD is a medically accepted diagnosis - it is accepted by the psychiatrists, the psychologists (and other therapists - all called tdocs), and the educational community. My MOTHER is on ritalin for inattentive ADHD. My bro is on strattera for regular ADHD. My son has been through many of the medications and is on strattera for ADHD. The therapist you saw is a fool, an idiot, and just plain old incompetent and MEAN. If she felt this way why didn't she tell you at the first meeting so you could know she is delusional and go find someone else?
Nuff said on her. Now on to neuropsychs. neuropsychologist stands for neuropsychologist - a therapist with special training on how the mind impacts behavior. A GOOD neuropsychologist exam will include several 3-4 hour sessions of testing and then a wait time of several weeks to a month and then a meeting to go over the written evaluation of the testing. This report can be shared with other psychiatrists and tdocs and teachers or whomever you choose to share it with. You can talk to your insurance company or call around to children's hospitals and other tdocs adn psychiatrists to find a neuropsychologist. Or google it.
I have some book suggestions for you. I strongly recommend you at least skim them. I chose to purchase them but your library may have some of them. You can order them through amazon by clicking at the link on the side of the page (which will help support this site), or by going to another bookstore (real or online) or even by checking online used book sellers.
The Explosive Child by Ross Greene is one that almost all of us have found invaluable. Love and Logic parenting (check out the various books at
www.loveandlogic.com - they have one that deals specifically with special needs kids as well as free audio downloads and other stuff), The Out of Sync Child and The Out of Sync Child Has Fun both by Carol Kranowitz and The Bipolar Child by Papalous.
Love and Logic and The Explosive Child can apply to any of our kids. I use both of them. I really like L&L because my husband "gets it" so we can be on the same page. The Out of Sync Child books are about sensory integration disorder (Sensory Integration Disorder (SID)). Sensory Integration Disorder (SID) is when the brain does not handle sensory input in the way normal brains do. There are a lot of therapies for this, including brushing therapy which actually can rewire the brain, sort of. It is show to create new pathways for the brain to handle the input. The HAs Fun book is packed with activities that are fun and help provide the sensory stimulation a child needs. You need an Occupational Therapist (Occupational Therapist (OT)) to evaluate him for this. Don't try to figure out brushing therapy by yourself. When done incorrectly it can cause real problems for the child.
MOST, if not ALL of our kids are diagnosis'd ADHD and/or ODD at first. I would say most have a LOT more going on than that. Many of the disorders look alike. Diagnosing (dxing) the problems our kids have is far more complicated than handling things like colds and strep throat and chicken pox. It is probably as much art and science and this is why our kids can spend years on the wrong treatments before we figure out what is going on. This is why a pediatrician should NOT diagnosis or treat things like ADHD. It just takes so much more than they can handle to be on top of all of these problems.
I recommended the Bipolar Child book because you can read it and think if it may or may not be your child. Because MANY of the psychiatric medications can cause a person with bipolar to cycle, it is suggested that parents try to rule it out before many medications are added. Stimulants (like ritalin and adderal and vyvanse and daytrana) and antidepressants (the SSRI/SNRI ones like strattera and prozac and zoloft as well as the older ones like amitryptiline) can each cause these problems. And manic states are OFTEN mistaken for ADHD. MANY of us have made that mistake.
Speaking of mistakes, no matter what else you do, be nice to yourself. If you wouldn't tell someone else out loud what you say, don't think it about yourself. You didn't wake up and say "Hmmm. Wonder how bad I can mess my kid up today?" so don't beat yourself up for mistakes. Apologize if appropriate and try not to do it again. It is ALL we can do.
Well, that is my long winded Hello! I hope that you find the help and support you need here. Ditch that therapist and find a new one - what she will do (if she hasn't done it already) is convince your child he is "bad" because SHE has a delusion that ADHD isn't "real". Yup. A DELUSION. Cause that is what it is when science has PROVEN that something exists and you insist it doesn't. It is like saying gravity doesn't exist, or the earth is flat.
SOME of the testing the schools will do. They have Occupational Therapist (OT)'s and psychologist. But these people are paid by the school and they ONLY evaluate how things will affect academics. NOT how they affect the rest of his life. Schools do NOT want to spend $$ on accomodations so frequently their experts will say the child doesn't have a problem when clearly he does. So it is best to line up your own experts as much as is possible.
Hugs, sweetie, we will help you through this.
Kids don't act like that because they are spoiled. Most of us spoil our kids.
