A Diagnosis

This week we got a diagnosis.

It’s one which makes sense to us and which certainly doesn’t come as a surprise, and it’s also quite possibly the first of many on this journey.

Little has ADHD.

We’ve sort of stumbled across it by accident in a way, as we originally approached post adoption support asking about sensory assessments for both children, after noticing several things which we felt warranted further investigation. They weren’t keen on just looking at the sensory side of things, but after much faffing on their part, we finally got ASF approval for multi-disciplinary assessments, including speech and language therapy, occupational therapy and a session with a neurodevelopmental paediatrician. We went into it wanting to better understand their inner workings and to develop strategies to help them, particularly in terms of sensory integration. We were well aware that diagnoses might come out of it and we were ok with that, although it wasn’t something we were particularly seeking or that was at the forefront of our minds.

I’m glad we’ve got it though. Little is of an age where she’s starting to notice ways in which she’s different from some of her peers. Adoption and her early life experiences explain some of that, but ADHD gives us all another framework to start to understand and help her. She’s doing well at school at the moment, but there are certain things she finds really difficult and I can see how they will become even more challenging as she gets older and the things asked of her become more demanding. So in that sense, I’m glad we can be forewarned and forearmed and tackle things proactively.

Both my wife and I have worked with children with ADHD before and I thought I knew quite a bit about it, but I’ve already learnt a lot more from what the paediatrician told us and from what we’ve read since. There’s a lot to absorb and decisions to be made about things like medication, although there’s plenty of time for that. As the assessment was carried out through the ASF, we had it outside of our local area, so it’s still a little bit unclear what (if any) services we’ll need to link into here. But Little’s in a fairly good place at the moment  and while there are difficulties, nothing feels critical. So we can wait for that.

One of the very nice things about the assessment (which I suspect was more about the doctor doing it than the assessment itself) was that it was very strengths based. We’d had to fill in all sorts of screening tools and questionnaires beforehand, but her first face to face question to us was asking us to tell her what Little is good at. She related really well to her and emphasised the positives throughout, including the positives within ADHD, which I’d not really thought about before. And Little has those in spades. She’s really energetic and creative. She’s a great dancer. She’s super enthusiastic about trying new things and she doesn’t let anything hold her back.

It was also quite validating to have a professional listen to our views and take them seriously. They’d asked for information from both us and the school, and Little presents very differently in the two environments so the accounts they got were very different. But I could tell the doctor was used to that, and there was no sense of her disbelieving us or implying that the problems were due to us or our parenting which was refreshing and not what we’ve experienced with some other services.

The slightly ironic thing about the timing of it all is that at the moment Little is not the one who is the most challenging to parent ninety five percent of the time. While trying to process Little’s diagnosis, we’ve  spent large parts of today attempting to stop Tiny throwing things and hitting people and dealing with a really primal rage and anxiety which has become more and more deep-seated in him over the past few months. Our gut instinct is that it’s trauma based, and that he’s reaching a point in his life where he’s processing large chunks of what’s happened to him in a way which he hasn’t been able to before, as his language and thinking is now much more developed. His assessment is yet to come though, and if I’m honest, I’m a little scared of what it might reveal.