Crazy Mama's Place: THE FRONT PORCH

Crazy Mama's Place: THE FRONT PORCH:


An Alternative Thought for ADHD   Part 1

     In January of 2018 my daughter phoned and told me she needed me to come and pick up her ten year old son. J.C. had had behavioral problems pretty much all of his life. My daughter had been diagnosed with Crohn’s disease when J.C. was about two years old, however, because Rae had been sick since he was born her parenting skills weren’t quite up to par. It’s difficult to deal with a child when you’re too sick to get out of bed or when you feel like your insides are falling out. J.C. learned to be the captain of his own ship from a very early age.

     When J.C. was about six or seven, my daughter phoned to tell me that he’d seen a new doctor. This doctor diagnosed J.C. with ODD (oppositional Defiance Disorder).  I laughed and told my daughter that he didn’t have ODD, “he has  “lackawhoopass.” When a child has known no boundaries, has had no consistent disciplinary actions taken, and has been the boss of his life for as long as he could remember, ODD may have been the result, but in my estimation there was a cause. I wondered if ODD could be the result of a learned behavior and not from a brain malfunction. In my mind the cause was lack of consistent disciplinary action, no boundaries set and that he’d been allowed to make his own decisions and discipline for pretty much all of his life. He had this fortitude about him that if he was told “no” he would make it a yes come hell or high water. Why should he listen to anyone when he’d always been the one to decide whether or not to do something and when he would do it? This little quirk in his personality came to full light when he began school. Teachers, principals and others found J.C. difficult to deal with because he would never listen to them, he did not care what they wanted him to do and he made it more than evident he didn’t care.

     When J.C. was four years old he became enraged when another child did something to him and he literally went off the deep end as far as behavior was concerned. No teacher, police officer or anyone else could control him. He would go into these blind rages and destroy whatever was in his path and for those who would try to coerce him by touching him it was as if he could eat them up and spit them on the ground. He was in this type of rage and the school felt it was necessary to lock down and call in the police force.  When my daughter called to tell me this I laughed and kept saying that she was lying because I couldn’t imagine that a school full of adults couldn’t control one little four year old.  As time went on, J.C.’s behavior only worsened.

     J.C. quickly had become the “bad boy” that no one wanted around them or their children. J.C. didn’t get along with kids his own age. He didn’t get along with adults because he wouldn’t listen and they couldn’t handle the fact that a child would be so disrespectful and defiant. By the time he was nine years old, J.C. had four felonies hanging over him and the children’s service agency was ready to take action and place him in a boy’s home or even juvenile detention because of his behavior.

     For years I had begged my daughter to send J.C. to me so that I could work with him. I commend her for not wanting him to feel like she had given up on him, but I had told her that each year that went by made it that much harder to find the things that could help him and that she may wind up waiting to late. For J.C. that time, almost too late, came quickly.

     J.C. had already been in the hospital psychiatric ward twice. He was on at least two very high power anti-psychotic drugs and his behavior was only getting worse. No one seemed to be able to keep him under control. No prescribed medications seem to lessen his symptoms, they actually made them worse. According to his school, J.C., was borderline mentally retarded and at the age of ten, J.C. couldn’t read, couldn’t count to twenty (and barely could count to ten without getting confused) and he had no concept of how just everyday things worked.

     Now I will tell you that I am not a big proponent of medicine as it’s prescribed today. The medical industry is far to concentrated on the bottom line----money, instead of the true causes of an illness.  I’ve had many instances within my own family where I have used natural medicines to help cure or subside symptoms of an illness and that has made me a true believer. In my estimation, God created an entire world with all of the things we need. That includes the means to heal ourselves if we are willing to search for the answers.

     As soon as J.C. was with me I began taking notes of different things about him. His behavior. His thought process. His entire being. There were things that seemed connected and there were things that just didn’t make sense. So, I began a journey of research and trial and error of things that might help.  Oh my goodness, the things I found that opened my eyes to his world of ups and downs.
     Due to the fact that J.C. was so far behind educationally and for the most part socially, I chose to home school him. The first and most obvious symptoms I observed were the beginning of my quest for the root of his problems. I didn’t just want medications that were geared toward easing his symptoms. I wanted to know what was causing the symptoms that were creating a very unhappy and distraught little boy.

     For years my daughter and I had talked about how J.C. could be sweating when it was twenty degrees outside. That was a sign to me that something wasn’t right inside his body. Most people look at it and say that it’s just the way the person is made and that they’ve always been like that. That wasn’t a  good enough answer for me.  J.C. also couldn’t sit still at all. He seemed to have an insatiable itch from the inside of his body that he could never get scratched. He was like a rubber band being wound tighter and tighter while he was listening to you and then he’d just snap. He’d begin to be destructive or have extreme raging outbursts. You would literally have to hold him down and restrain him so that he didn’t hurt himself or those around him.  Many times I have narrowly escaped  metal toys or whatever was closest to him to throw. He’d break down a door if he couldn’t get through quick enough. His strength was like that of three grown men. His behavior was so erratic and irrational that teachers and those who were closely involved with him were at wits end.  It’s difficult to teach a child that can’t sit still and is constantly interrupting or distracting the other children. It’s difficult to keep harmony in a house when one child demands all the attention from bad behavior. In all honesty, J.C. was the kind of kid that used up all your emotions  and energy at once. By the time you had his behavior halfway calmed down your exhaustion and mental state made you feel you were either ready to throw yourself off a bridge or lock him in a cage and call the cops to report yourself for child abuse. It isn’t a laughing matter, but there honestly were times that you didn’t feel you or him would come out of the battles alive. You can ask any of the teachers he bit or the police officer he hit while trying to be restrained, even the bus driver that demanded J.C. be  restrained in the bus seat while being transported to and from school. J.C.’s behavior and his psychotic outbursts were real and definitely not for the faint at heart.

     I began looking at the first of things. Number one, the prescribed medication.  Researching the side effects of the drugs J.C. was on worried me tremendously. Because he came to us from a different state, one of the anti psychotic drugs he was on was so powerful that the prescription was not allowed to cross the state line. That was certainly a red flag. Since he had no doctor set up where we live and his prescription was out, I decided that I’d like to begin from scratch. I needed to see just how J.C. handled limited or no drugs to determine just what ‘his’ true symptoms were.  Slowly I began weaning him off the only anti psychotic drug he was still on. In the process I researched natural supplements that could help with his symptoms. I came across a product made by the company Genexa. In reading the information on this company I liked the story behind why they began creating supplements for children and felt comfortable with their products. I purchased the “Calm Keeper” because the ingredients were geared toward most of the symptoms that J.C. had.  There is a link on our pages for Calm Keeper if you’d like to give it a try. Yes, I do get a small percentage for a sale, however, that small percentage is not why I chose to advertise this product. I don’t want to offer any product that I don’t believe in, whether it could make me money or not.  There may be other products out there that are just as effective as Calm Keeper, but I haven’t tried them and I can’t in good conscience promote them until I do.  I have seen how Calm Keeper works and I believe in it.

     Initially the Calm Keeper was making a difference. I noticed that J.C. was beginning to concentrate better and could comprehend more of what I was teaching him. It was so noticeable that even J.C. commented one day, “mamaw, I can think better. I understand that.” That was a vast improvement in and of itself. However, the constant moving, itching and squirming were still evident and I knew something needed to help him with that. My quest for the root of the problem took me deep on a journey within the brain.

     Because I knew J.C. had always had a problem with being extremely hot no matter what the temperature I began searching what regulates our body temperature. Aha! The hypothalamus is the body temperature’s thermostat.  I thought okay, so just what is the hypothalamus and what does it do. What’s it responsible for inside our bodies. It’s just a little thing at the base of the brain, but it seems to me that it is responsible for a whole lot more than most average people know. I didn’t.

     I will try and break down what I’ve found as simply as I can. If you’ve ever been to a doctor about something serious,  they break out all the big words and start putting the high priced fancy degree to showboating excellence. I want you to understand it so I will try to break it down as generally as I can.

      Now most people have heard of the “Flight or Fright” response we have when we’re scared, but that’s just a small portion of what the hypothalamus does. The hypothalamus is triggered when the body signals that there is a stressor. It sends out a signal to the pituitary gland and the adrenal gland. The short term effect is the “Flight or Fright” mode from what’s called the Sympathomedullary Pathway. Long term stress is regulated by the HPA (Hypothalamic Pituitary Adrenal System). Cortisol helps the body to maintain a steady supply of blood sugar, which is what also helps our bodies cope with stress and helps it return to normal. So we can see that stressors can have a huge impact on how our body acts. The hypothalamus is also responsible for activating the Adrenal Medulla, which is a part of the ANS (Autonomic Nervous System). The ANS is part of the peripheral nervous system or the things that our bodies do that we aren’t conscious of. The Adrenal Medulla is where Adrenaline is secreted, which is what gets us ready for “Flight or Fright.”  Adrenaline causes changes within the body, which include an increase in heart rate, that pumping feeling you feel when you’re scared and want to run (getting ready for “Flight”), it  decreases digestion, AND it increases sweating. Aha! I am starting to get somewhere I thought. J.C.’s body always seems to be in the “Flight or Fright” mode and he’s always sweating.  Once a threat is over the parasympathetic branch is supposed to bring the body back into normal state.  Evidently, J.C.’s body always felt some type of stressor and was in that constant “flight or fright” mode.

     Then I came across Chromium. It wasn’t so much what I was reading about Chromium itself, but rather, the fact that J.C. had always had a metallic smell to him. His breath, his body odor were at times extremely overwhelming. That was something I figured I would come back to and see what causes for that may be.

     So, to boil this down to ingestible parts, my findings just made me want to learn more because things about J.C. started making sense. The hypothalamus was so much more than I’d ever realized. It’s a central part of the Autonomic Nervous System and it helps control:
              *Body Temp
              *Thirst
              *Hunger
              *Sleep
              *Emotional Activity

     So now I see that J.C.’s hypothalamus must be out of whack because he had problems with his body temp, sleep and emotions. Nothing left to do but dive into this brain thing deeper because I still needed to find out why he acted like he had that incredible itch all the time. I had to find out what controlled the itch response in our bodies to be able to see if any of this was connected.

     On the next post I’ll go through the rest of my research and how I found the combination of things that have helped create the child J.C. was meant to be. Today there’s more harmony and peace in our home and he’s picking up speed on his educational path. You won’t want to miss the way you may be able to help your child become a more happy and productive child.

     For me, finding and piecing together the research I found, .seems as though it’s all a big secret. I mean, the people with degrees in these areas should certainly know how all of this works and how it should be done to help kids. There isn’t any good information out there about kids with ADHD or ODD or any of the things J.C. has dealt with all of his life. Everyone wants you on prescribed medication, but no one knows what the total of long term effects are. The short term side effects scared me.  The medical field says they don’t know what causes ADHD and for the medications they prescribe they tell you that they “THINK” that a certain drug interacts a certain way with the brain to give the effects they want.  When you’re dealing with my child I want more than thinking something works a certain way. If I’m going to give any child something that is supposed to help them I want to know that it’s working on the areas that it should. I wouldn’t give them a medication geared for cancer if they had the flu.

     All that I’m trying to do is to get people to look at things from a realistic point of view. Let’s spend time truly looking and finding things that help our kids. Ask your physician questions about the symptoms your child has. I am in no way advocating you just willy nilly take a child off of medication. Do your research. Ask the questions. Be the involved parent who helps find the answers to make your child and your life better.

     I can’t wait until you hear the rest of the story and hear the amazing results J.C. is experiencing, so I’ll see you back on the porch real soon!
   
     ****Please note that nothing within J.C.’s story should be mistaken, misconstrued for sound medical advice. I only speak from my experience. Please do not stop taking medications without the advice of your physician. I am not a doctor and do not advise stopping medications cold turkey (some medications can be extremely harmful if stopped suddenly!), so please seek the guidance and advice of your physician before beginning any new treatment.