He is now in the accelerated program in the local High School and is doing great on Adderall.  He was diagnosed in the 3rd grade.  He started out on Ritalin, and did well, but the down time in the afternoon was hard, he was very moody.  On Adderall he takes it once a day and the only thing so far is that he has to eat with the medication and eat regularly afterward or else he gets really bad headaches.  When he took it 2x a day, he complained of an upset stomach occasionally as well as the headache.  I found that Kyle does great in school with medication, but horrible in sports on it.  Doing sports requires quick thinking, spontaneous reactions at times, he was unable to accomplish that on the medication.  He really has no other problems with the ADHD except for the impulsiveness and his attention span, which hopefully we can help him learn to accomodate for it.  I also realized that he got his ADHD from me, I went to Catholic School, so it wasn't as noticable until I tried College and couldn't keep up.    Medication is not for everyone, it has worked for Kyle, but we have to start looking into alternatives now, because we don't want him on medication for the rest of his life.

Kyle is my 17 yr old son who has ADHD.  He was diagnosed with ADHD at age 8, when he started having difficulty focusing in class and sitting still.  He was not very aggressive, just very impulsive which caused him to have a lack of friends.

Jared is my 15 yr old son who is classified as multi-handicapped.  At this time there is no medical diagnosis for him.  He has a variety of  problems.  He is considered developementally delayed, in that some areas of his developement have been slower than others.  He also has a spasmatic bladder and is on Detrol XL and Ditropan XL to help control the spasms.  He also takes a stool softener to help prevent more bladder problems which occur when constipated.     Up until 3 years ago, Jared attended our Boces (Board of Cooperative Education Services) program in a center-based school, which means he was in an all special needs building.  He had been in BOCES since his 3rd birthday and until he entered he didn't speak.  Since that time, he has come a long way and now is in our District public school in their Special Ed. class and has maintained high honor roll for the entire year and next year he will be given a one-on-one aide and be fully mainstreamed into the general school population.     When Jared was born he had stiffness in all his joints and torso most likely from being in one position in the last months of developement before birth.  As a result, he has trouble bending, moving, climbing and manipulating objects.  He was receiving OT (Occupational Therapy-fine motor skills), PT (Physical Therapy-gross motor skills), and Speech (for delay and he wears hearing aides).