Let's throw Inattentive ADD into the mix!

I just checked -- and the last time I blogged was a year ago.

This is because this year was my son's most difficult in a long time. It was hard on him, and equally hard on us.

We had the "perfect storm" of the following -- expectations raised in 8th grade, a LOT more homework, and the fact that all of the many ADD medications we've tried this year are not working. It has been an incredibly stressful time, and therefore, no posts.

The odd thing is -- the Asperger's element of this is relatively OK. My son has been doing fairly well socially. He's grown, he's matured a little, and he isn't so tied to computer and video games. This is definitely a step in the right direction.

The trouble, from what I can see, is that he has Inattentive ADD, or ADHD-Primarily Inattentive, or ADHD-PI, or ADHD-I, or whatever they call it. But it's the COMPLETE OPPOSITE to typical ADHD. These children (and adults) are daydreamers, they cannot focus (the one thing that is like ADHD), they are NOT hyperactive, in fact they are much more likely to be quiet and inactive. Sometimes this is juxtaposed with something else called Sluggish Cognitive Tempo. But basically from my research it all seems to mean the same thing -- someone with these type of ADHD cannot pay attention to anything that holds no interest for them. They are GREAT at whatever they are good at or interested in (in my son's case, math and languages) but just cannot keep it together for any subjects that they are NOT interested in.

We've been in and out of the doctor's office more times than I can count, trying new meds this year -- and none of them have helped. Maybe initially, even for a few weeks, but after that, nothing. It's been SO frustrating! What is also frustrating is that I am finding out that the psychiatric world isn't so quick to legitimize "inattentive ADD". Also, there is little to no help online. I get the feeling that the current feeling is that, yes, this could be a subset of ADD, and yes, it does prove to be a little different than your typical ADD -- but there's nothing much anyone can do for it. There's also very little research being done on it.

So this is my "new" task -- to figure out whatever is the problem with inattentive ADD, figure out who is out there writing about it or helping kids with it -- and if there's no one out there who's an expert, then I'm going to have to dissect this whole thing myself and figure out where to go from here. I sure wish I had a medical degree now...