Hello everyone! Welcome to my first blog :) I am hoping to let you know a little about my story, and the experiences I had over the years will my son, which led me to be here today. As I mentioned in the website, I am doing this for, and because of my son who struggled through years of mental pain.
Firstly, I would like to say, please find out more about Autism and ADHD. The feedback I have so far from people is that, even these days, parents, school teachers and front-line Doctors still miss signs of possible neurodevelopmental problems in our kids. Obvious traits are easy to spot, but it is the mild signs, that may only occur occasionally that are more difficult to notice, but still as important to identify, as shown in my experience. They can have far reaching consequences if not dealt with.
Primarily, I just feel like I want to help people become aware of this issue, so other families do not have to go through what we did.
My sons’ Dad and I never knew what was really going on beneath the surface. To us he seemed fine, maybe a little different to some kids, but we just explained it as ‘oh – he has some unusual personality quirks like me’, or ‘his strange behaviour is just like Dad’ – you know, we found ways to explain it. We never thought that an intelligent boy, who had no learning difficulties growing up, apart from what we saw as being ‘lazy’ could have any learning/behavioural or mental issues. This was maybe around age 10 – 13. At that time his school work was good, he had a few friends and all seemed fine. Around age 15 is when his marks at school started dropping and he saw his friends less. Which was his own choice, and to their credit, his two close friends tried quite hard to keep in touch.
But, as parents, we still did not think our son had any developmental problems. Neither of us knew much about developmental disorders. I had heard quite a bit about ADHD and a little about Autism (ASD). I though ADHD was when kids were hyperactive and distracted and Autism was a learning difficulty where some kids couldn’t speak well. That’s about all I knew.
Well, let me tell you – there is a lot we need to teach ourselves about, and also School Teachers for that matter, they spend a great deal of time with our children and have a role to play in their development. We are the ‘gatekeepers’ we are supposed to notice problems. In the very early days, I will admit I was one of those people who thought ADHD and Autism was over-diagnosed and people used it as an excuse for explaining children's' behaviour.
If my mind can be changed, and it surely has, everyone needs to ‘wake-up’! That’s not to say that in some cases, diagnosis may be wrong, but the main issue is the lack of awareness in why a behaviour occurs, and to really investigate that. Are there any patterns of unusual behaviour ? The more I read, I find out that the psychology of analysing behaviours and reasons for why they occur is very complex. All individuals are different and there are many varied reasons why people behave the way they do. It is often not until an adverse event has occurred, that you look back and review the past, ‘seemingly under a microscope’, analysing everything that ever happened, everything that was said to find out ‘why did this happen’? As the saying goes “the benefit of hindsight”. What we need is a crystal ball, but sadly that is a fantasy. I will leave it there for now. Next I will tell you what I did notice - ‘in hindsight’ and what signs were there early on in my son, that I did not know could point toward a neurodevelopment problem, ADHD and Autism (ASD)…bye for now…
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