He asked me the night before, "Why do you need to bring me to the Doctor, Mummy". I kept silent but Little Jas just blurted out "...cause Mummy said you were naught."
He threw a tantrum and said, "Mummy, how could you? You know what that meant..." and he went on.
Stopped him there and corrected him. I decided to bring him to the Doctor cause I needed him to get a proper diagnosis. I needed to know if he was just plain lazy, forgetful and careless or he actually had ADHD. How did I even know that &*^$#$^ word... ADHD?
Little Jen is now 10 year old (yes, I stopped blogging since 2014 and I am back) and the complaints I heard from his educators were consistent, regardless of who, what subject, which level... similar.
Kindy: "He would just sit at his desk and throw all his stationery out on the table before he starts any writing, quite a mess. If only he could be a little more organized..."
Primary 1-3: "I tried reprimanding him, I tried motivating him, I tried to make him do his homework. But, it seemed like nothing worked. He would not hand in his homework and it went on since Primary 1. I have been his class teacher since he was in Primary 1 and he seemed to have gotten worse. Maybe I am not the right teacher for him. Or maybe..... you could get him tested in case he has any learning difficulties. My own son has dyslexia, maybe he has it?"
Imagine what I felt when I heard that. He heard and seemed really hurt too.
That was when I begun doing my research about learning disability. I was very confident that he had no dyslexia cause he could read and spell well. He had problems with punctuation marks, capital and small letters, those little things but not with reading and ABCs. I stumbled upon ADHD... ADD... Asperger's... autism...
In Primary 4, he received similar complaints about homework, stationery, attentiveness and such from his new class teacher. I was angry at him and reprimanded him for the complaints.
By March, we were all confined to our homes due to the Movement Restriction Order in a battle against Covid 19. I took the opportunity to observe him by tutoring him, giving him house chores... etc.
Homework: He would make a lot of careless mistakes. Copying a sentence again would sound like a breeze but he would make some tiny mistakes again and again and again regardless of how many time I made him do correction. Sometimes, he would just rush thru and handed in half-baked worksheets. 😡
House Chores: Can you imagine a room after a house robbery? Yes, that was how his room looked like on daily basis. Cleaned up the night before and the next day would be 'hell' again. I tried giving specific instructions like pick up this and that and then that... he would only pick up one and would be on his way to something else. And I reminded him for the second and third, he would do second and be gone again. 😳
Personal Items: He would once in a while sneak the mobile phone upstairs and when he heard us coming, he would hide the mobile phone somewhere. Do you know the story of the raccoon that constantly loses the acorns it hid? He was like that. He would seriously look for the phone all over and clearly seemed to have forgotten the fact that he took the phone and hid it.
I was so puzzled... how could he forget something so recent and seemed to be purposefully done.
In July, the kids could return to school... finally. In just days after that... the class teacher called:
"Mrs Little Jen, your son lost a lot of his text books, his workbooks, and could not even turn in his homework on time. He is already behind in his studies, and he will not be able to catch up if he keeps on doing this. I prefer to motivate him rather than giving him a taste of the cane or punishment in order for him to be better."
I told the teacher to help observe him. Told her that I observed him myself and I was desperate to know what was going on with him myself. A class teacher with 40+ students in class requiring attention, I guessed it was not possible for her to notice him alone.
Made an appointment with Dr Cindy, Sunway Medical Center. I was lucky that the appointment that was supposed to be bout 4 months later got brought forward to 19th November 2020. But that was also the day, I received an official diagnosis to confirm my suspicion. Little Jen had been living with mild ADHD.
What do I do as a parent? How can I make his growing up life better? Away from negative perception and people that will simply label him as 'lazy', 'bad attitude', 'no respect', 'stupid', 'messy'.... and these people also labelled us as parents as 'couldn't care less', 'too lenient', 'too loving'. Especially in a society that believes in 'spare the rod, spoil the child', it is not easy at all.
What do I do?
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